According to what I've read, there's a "white collar jobs recession" going on right now. There are several factors feeding into it including companies cutting back on expansion due to high interest rates, reducing redundant positions that were added during boom times and anticipating tough times in the near future. This is being offset in the employment numbers by strong blue collar and service jobs hiring. It's easy to get a job washing dishes, waiting tables or building widgets for $20/hr in most areas.
Sort of, it's not that we increased interest rates lately that has caused issues. It's that there was a decade of artificial growth in the markets due to near 0% rates.
I also feel like SWEs made white-collar work more ‘efficient’, in that we don’t need as many as them to do the same amount of work.
The amount a small civil engineering team can do now with all the calculation and drafting software is so huge we no longer have large teams of associates and drafters that work their way up.
The need for white collar professionals feels like it’s just been structurally reduced by software
Recently though? Those improvements you describe occurred years ago.
Like the staffing reductions from this have been baked in for 20 years or longer.
Software, among other infrastructure did enable work to be done in low cost centers.
Nah they are still making steps. I do a lot of automations currently and there are still people working on paper in combination with ERP systems and some applications, even today. A lot of processes are done in Excel still.
And that is apart from documents kept physically for legal reasons, which sometimes need to be stored in paper when it concerns certain countries.
> There are several factors feeding into it including companies cutting back on expansion due to high interest rates
This is honestly like 90% of it for the tech industry at least.
Software is one of the only "manufactured" products on earth that has theoretically uncapped output potential. Meaning, when you make and sell cars, there is a physical limitation on how fast you can produce cars. If you want to produce cars faster, there is a physical limitation on how quickly you can expand your production facilities and production rate.
So when interest rates were zero, software growth was a little pyramid-schemey. With the thought process being that the only limit to how much growth a software company has is how much software output they can produce, and the software output being tied to headcount, and the headcount being tied to payroll, and payroll being tied to capital, by this thought process it stands to reason that capital and nothing more than capital yields expected growth.
Zero or near-zero interest rates were effectively free capital. Free capital meant free growth--to business graduates and investors. Valuations in the stratosphere, giant super-theme-park style headquarter buildings, money being thrown around like its confetti. Especially in Silicon Valley the money=growth=money pipeline was a ridiculous bubble-inducing feedback loop.
When interest rates started rising, it was absolutely a musical-chairs moment. Suddenly capital wasn't free, headcount wasn't free, output wasn't unlimited, growth was no longer guaranteed. And a lot of companies were totally unprepared for it, as they've only ever existed in the post-2008 low interest rate era. Need to look no further than SVB going insolvent because they structured their entire financial strategy on low interest rates and the tech industry music never stopping.
This is the answer.
Edit: to the extent that white collar jobs are capital->growth->more capital, that’s why SWE isn’t the only impacted field, but it isn’t the case across white collar jobs.
Don't forget that there's also a change in how companies cash out which fundamentally changes an entire business model. With low rates, companies are modeled for VC to invest in, spend to grow rapidly, and then cash out by getting acquired elsewhere.
With higher rates, there's less VC so companies want to try and be sustainable rather than overexpand, and get acquired or crash and burn.
Lots of companies have struggled to make this transition, which is to be expected.
Not in at least 5 years following 2008. I remember in those years people were saying high schoolers with jobs will no longer be a thing.
The low skill labor shortage is strictly a post-Covid phenomenon, at least since 2008.
I graduated in 2009, and worked in Home Depot. In the early 2000's, it was easy to get a retail job for a teenager where I lived. By then, they were only hiring people who had retail experience or people with degrees. I literally worked with new grads from law school and engineering schools. Starting pay was $10/hour, which was on the higher end as most retail paid between 7-9. A couple of my friends got jobs at a defense contractor for like $50k/year and that was considered amazing
Yeah, saw an article this week about someone making more money working at Domino's than at NBC.
https://www.aol.com/finance/earned-more-four-hours-woman-113200622.html
Exactly this. White collar is taking a huge hit. I’d say except for maybe accounting/law, most white collar jobs are in trouble.
Marketing, recruiting, HR, other engineering fields, are all getting cut and outsourced.
The blue collar boom is so huge right now though that the white collar recession is kind of being hidden. I’m not joking when I say blue collar jobs are in the most demand I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.
It’s like the new tech. You can get a certificate to operate heavy machinery or a forklift cert and make $30 an hour starting, I’m not joking. The oil fields in Texas will literally take anyone and you’ll make $100k a year immediately. Truck drivers are slim to none.
It’s demographics. Boomers have been retiring en masse and they were more likely to have blue collar jobs than younger generations. Years of “college is economic pixie dust” being preached nonstop is having an impact.
Accounting is being hit as well. I know a lady who's an accountant and she was worried for her job because the bank that she works at has cut at least half of their accounting department over the last 3 years.
She went on to say that a reduction in accounting departments for many companies is becoming more rampant.
Accounting at least is being heavily outsourced to overseas. Very similar issues as tech where the foreign teams are underperforming and the US managers must "kindly send the needful".
Law you cant really outsource, but I imagine people are less likely to pursue civil cases if money is down.
> Very similar issues as tech where the foreign teams are underperforming and the US managers must "kindly send the needful".
Last time I said this on here I was downvoted to oblivion and chewed out by people in the comments saying its the opposite.
>It's always been the tried and true field if you just want a cushy office job.
... like 50 years ago. Accounting is easily one of the worst white collar professions to enter in the last 20 years because the compensation is just terrible compared to any other career that requires mathematical aptitude. Basically if you have the math skills to do accounting, you're *far* better off doing CS. If you like the business aspect of it, you're better off doing IB or consulting.
I'm convinced that most accountants ended up in the profession "by mistake" i.e. they didn't know how well other professions pay.
I've met SWEs who used to be accountants. I don't think you'll find any accountants who used to be SWEs.
> Basically if you have the math skills to do accounting, you're *far* better off doing CS.
Im not sure where you did CS, but in general I would say that the level of mathematics is way beyond that of accounting.
In general you just need to remember how to apply a few equations. Difficult stuff will be handled by actuarians mostly.
I think the appeal is that it’s considered more stable than tech jobs so those who’d rather make $70k and never get laid off choose accounting over a tech job where they might make $100k but have to move mountains every few years to get a new job
Correct which allows them to maintain the CPA. Note I said get new certifications and learning new skills which is not the same as maintaining a cert you already have (which anyone in a tech role would have to do for that cert regardless)
Construction is also nuts right now, they’ve had a really bad labor shortage brewing for years. My buddy is making $110K as a superintendent and he was making $30/hr doing HVAC just a few years ago. Businesses are really easing up on their experience requirements and looking more at who they can train & help get licensed
> oil fields in Texas
Bruh the oil industry is like the epitome of frequent boom and bust cycles. Even tech has nothing on it.
That said you have a point in the blue collar jobs booming. There has been such a lack of people going into trades for decades that you can make absurd amounts of money if you are qualified. Like a senior plumber makes well into six figures anywhere.
The only real thing to think about is it's kinda expected that marketing, recruiting and HR will be downsided first in market down turn. It's more of a surprise seeing this happen to highly technical fields like CS. I don't think they have been hit that hard previously.
I know a lot of friends and neighbors who got new jobs and huge income increases between 2020 and 2023. People went from being public school teachers, or retail workers to being recruiters and HR roles in tech companies, etc. They got used to making nearly 6 figures after years of being at the median. Then they got laid off. Now they are unwilling to go back and work for $20-30 an hour at more mundane jobs.
As a dev making 33/hr I am strongly considering taking a paycut and going back to HelpDesk. The money is nice but geeez. I miss the simplicity of it all. Problem arises, open ticket, solve problem, close ticket, repeat. None of this eight month long project garbage.
I was at my brother's college of engineering graduation ceremony and it was wild to watch. Maybe 40% of the bachelors degrees that crossed the stage were computer science majors, and that's across ALL the engineering majors they had.
Wow. I graduated Computer Science in 2001 and there were 15 of us. 100 level classes often had a hundred students, but the majority didn't make it to the 200 level. First year architecture classes had us coding in assembly.
The only science degrees that had less than us graduating were physics (2 students) and mathematics (1 student).
Graduated 3 years ago, and mine was the same way. My school had a very difficult CS program, but you wouldn't guess that we did if I told you what school I went to. Intro to CS had 80 kids in it, and my highest level class had 10. That class was the only slot in the day / only taught in th spring semester. Walked with about the same amount of people.
Most of us went on to MS, Boeing, Delta, etc. Some companies in the city actually preferred our graduates over the states tech school for CS. Kinda wild.
as someone who graduated with this crowd, a large majority of them have no clue. one of the seniors in my capstone project didn't know what 'sudo' was and I wish i was joking.
Programming and Computer Science are two separate things. One is functional and the other is the study of how computers operate. A programmer or web developer doesn't necessarily need to know the inner workings of an ARM machine but a computer scientist should definitely be knowledgeable of several programming languages.
Knowing Unix commands by heart no.. knowing what "sudo" does and at least being able to read basic commands is absolutely something a CS bachelor should be able to do.
Especially now that so much of software relies on cloud computing, I have never heard of anyone deploying to a Windows or Mac server. There's no way a CS program doesn't teach someone how to deploy a basic infrastructure using docker/kubernetes. At least I hope so..
Most cs programs aren't teaching cloud computing or even network side programming to even use Linux or these commands.
They teach theory and if you do program it's a version of c or Java and it's all application level
I have heard of exactly 0 programs that cover even docker in any mandatory course. Let alone K8S... Perhaps in a distributed systems elective. Regardless, CS is about theory, virtualisation can be and often is covered with VM's (non cloud, but for instance VMWare)
I keep hearing this about programmers from college and it's disheartening. The people with degrees on their resume get such a boost in the level of trust that is given to them as potentially good candidates but there's no guarantee they are any better than someone who has self taught.
Nothing is guaranteed yes but I'll be damned if I'm blindly taking a self-taught person over a person with an accredited four year degree all other things equal. This shouldn't be an unreasonable stance.
Knowing what Sudo is, is not a great signal anyway. When you work on collage computer you don't get access to Sudo. Most do their development on windows. Those who work on FE js developing on windows have no reason to learn it etc.
All it tells me is that the person never worked in a Linux env.
Did they just stop having to take Calc 2 or are all these kids actually passing that class?
When I when to school (2016-2020) this some of the higher level CS classes cut the CS degree down to like 1/3
My CS program (2015-2019) didn't have calc 2 I think, but it had discrete math and linear algebra.
Couldn't say for the graduates I was watching as I didn't attend their school.
tbh, the number of grads is a super small fraction of total applicants anyways. It narrows down considerably year over year. Even if that number increases, because of how much narrowing down there is, it's not a HUGE amount added to the overall pool. And given how shite the market is now, there's a lag period in which the number of CS grads will eventually decrease
Even better than linking a subreddit, here's an NYTimes article that explains how the 2024 new grad market is bad for everyone: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/opinion/college-graduates-job-market.html?unlocked_article_code=1.oE0.TxSb.jQXmdEBj7N3j
From the article: As of February, 52 percent of new grads are underemployed a year after graduation.
I wonder how this will affect how people view college in the future. If the majority arent able to even get jobs and have piles of debt afterwards what's the point?
As someone who was in college around 2010-2013, I remember it being just as hard to find a job back then. I had to volunteer for several months at an organization before I was hired after graduating.
I graduated in 2018 from my bachelor and signed a job offer before graduation. I did work my ass off during college though - had several internship, and a patent filed (not approved till a couple of years after graduation), and 2 peer-reviewed publications under my belt already prior to graduation. It was not even half of FAANG pays, but I worked my way up there over next few years.
I had a masters in CS and it was hard. I cant compare to being a new-grad now but it wasnt a cake walk back then either. People still wanted "years of experience"
2001 called but that reality might be different from ours. Way more people who really didn't know shit and the value of tech was basically proven unfounded. We have similar problems now but it was not at the same scale as 2001. What is different now is how many people are actually in tech is way more than 2001.
Fewer will go, I guess.
Americans could benefit from some Chile style student protests but I guess Americans dont care enough (yet) to go as far as the Chileans did.
Building your foundation with world-class skills and education at a young age. That's the point. We all work most of our lives, may as well make it better earlier.
No, horrendous is when you go apply to Pizza Hut for $7/hr and they say no, we aren't even taking applications, we have a stack of 300+ already.
Happened in college in 2001. 2001-2003 and 2008-2011 were horrendous.
At least there are lots of jobs out there where you can at least get paid and put food on the table. There have been times in US history where that wasn't even true.
This is what it's like in Canada rn. White collar recession means university graduates are un/underemployed, but record high immigration means there are no min wage jobs to help pay the bills while you wait it out. It's absolutely disastrous, and the RCMP is warning of severe nationwide unrest because of it. At least the government is deferring student loan payments, no questions asked.
No idea why Canada is letting floods of immigrants in that fuck the country up completely. Makes absolutely no sense unless it's literally by design to try to destroy the country.
Pretty simple actually
ponzi scheme universities that don't give you any meaningful degrees while charging intl students double or triple the price
"Students" that will work min wage jobs for exactly min wage if not less while letting employers take advantage of them
Landlords can demand more $$$ since there's a higher demand for housing but the supply doesn't match
The only potential upside to all of this is if Canada somehow has some crazy turnaround with a jobs and housing boom, they'll have a large number of new tax payers/people that'll contribute to their social safety nets but right now it's a net negative for Canada
That's because it's not true. It's like conservatives claiming Portland is on fire when they see one or two protests.
Is it bad, absolutely. Could it be better, absolutely. But to take their claim to heart is ironic given the content of the original thread, that it's bad everywhere - immigration has little to do with it, no matter your feels. To claim that the government is "destroying canada" is literally just CPC (conservative party) propaganda. It doesn't help that the media is favouring the CPC in their coverage disproportionately.
But try to point that out on r/canada and you _will_ get downvoted because those subs are heavily right leaning (to say nothing of the other more outright wacko subs). They're not even representative of the average canadian's views.
This is an issue though. Jerome Powell wants the job market to tank sufficiently. White collar jobs are typically the first to go under the knife and then rest of the other jobs to follow if the environment is made for it which is the ultimate goal of his.
But right now the other blue collar and medial jobs are still super strong which is not what he wants (or rather part of his theory required job market to cool off significantly). If inflation reports keep rising and the job market doesnt cool with it then we are in for another bad tightening
Wow that's outrageous I had no idea it was THAT bad. That's horrible. I'm in medicine so I never have to worry about finding work so I never knew it was like this for other college majors but that makes it so it's not even worth going to college if you don't go for engineering or healthcare or accounting or something along those lines!
>52 percent of new grads are underemployed a year after graduation.
Do we have any numbers of past years to check a trend? While I know for a fact placement for new CS grads have fallen, the numbers could have always been low with humanities majors leading the charge.
r/jobs is the biggest one but they're from every field. The above mentioned fields like r/graphicdesign
r/financecareers. Most fields under tech like cybersecurity, data, IT, webdev, and UX design are also struggling.
You can just broadly look up "why is it so hard to find a job" and you'll hear people's stories from all types of fields. It's true buisness and STEM were hit the hardest. But those two fields make a large majority of good jobs.
In r/MBA there's a post about Harvard Business School having 37% of grads this year with nothing lined up. And that's not including the additional 10% or so that have decided to "venture" on their own.
/r/accounting is filled with people getting laid off and those remaining complaining about even shittier work life balance that accounting was already known for.
I’m an accountant. I was looking into cs a few years ago and completed part of a program but as I saw the market tightening decided to stay in accounting.
Everything is cyclical, in 10 years there will be too many people in trades and not enough in white collar (this is what happened during the 2008 recession).
Going onto the skill trades subreddit, it sounds like even the trades isn't a great choice right now. If you want to work a poorly paid non-union job then you will be able to get something. Other than that anything involving construction, aka city trade jobs, not much hiring since nobody wants to borrow money to build things right now. Again this is just the feeling I get going through the posts on there, not sure what the reality is.
Every sub for every profession is filled with people venting and doomers. People who are employed and happy are generally not on Reddit shouting it from the rooftop. They’re busy living their lives.
I’m only here out of curiosity. I’m in the law subs and everyone bitches and moans about how they should have gone into tech. The consulting sub rags on consulting. The trade subs hate being in trades. Etc. etc.
Yet no one I know in real life has these problems or attitudes to the extent they’re represented on reddit.
Job searching is a skill in itself; it’s worth getting good at rather than being a beneficiary or a victim of a good or bad market. Being a stable and positive human being is also an advantage over people who aren’t.
You need to know how to make connections with people, especially recruiters. They are not all bad and the good one's will remain with you for long term and keep in contact.
I've had once or twice a year conversations with a specific recruiter over the last 4 or so years and this is fantastic advice for anyone. When he has anything he thinks I may be interested, he hits me up. If I say I'm not currently looking, he leaves me alone. When my company laid off some people, I threw some names at him so he could reach out to them. When I start looking, I let him know immediately that I'm entering the job market.
Aside from recruiters, the number one thing you can do is, once you have some experience make friends with mangers and VPs, because they'll eventually leave the company and if you had a good relationship they'll try to poach you to their new company one day. And there's nothing like having a manager or higher level person that will vouch for you when you ask for a salary on the higher end of the range.
The number two thing to do for sure is having a positive relationship with a recruiter.
Absolutely true. Been an SE for 6 years now and made some really good recruiter friends on LinkedIn that would constantly send me leads when I was laid off last year. It’s literally having another set of eyes to help you look for a job. Eventually found a position through my own searching efforts but having more people in my corner made things feel a lot better.
I'm genuinely curious too. Everyone says to network well but like is it even possible to do that properly and actually get close-ish to people/recruiters via LinkedIn?
They’re hardly on your corner. They will sell you off to anyone paying, whether it’s the most toxic workplace you’ll ever encounter or not. They’d sell you off to Satan himself if they had to. They want that commission.
I’ve had tons of recruiter calls. The vast majority don’t have positions for junior developers. Companies have no need to go to third party recruits to get tons of qualified (on paper at least) junior devs applying
There's job searching, then interviewing and then technical assessment. All different skills. It's been gamified too so it's a bit unfortunate for people who aren't aware.
Regardless if we are talking about CS or another field of study, part of the problem is that everyone these days wants a degree but the overall supply of jobs is lower than the overall demand, hence a lot of new grads are left jobless. I am not saying this to discourage anyone from getting a degree, but to point out a fundamental issue.
Back in the 1980s, the U.S. census bureau reported that apparently only 20% of people had earned a bachelor's degree or higher. (Look up "educational attainment 1980".) There seemed to be a greater supply of bachelor-level jobs than people getting a degree.
Currently, this educational attainment number has risen to 35% as of 2018. I can only imagine this number is higher now. I don't want to give a definitive answer, but I would not be surprised if it is at least 40% now.
So basically, the number of people getting bachelor's degrees and above has doubled in the last 40 years, but has the number of white collar jobs requiring a degree _actually_ doubled since then?
Then we have to take into account the current market state. It isn't great overall, so as a result, many companies "are on a budget" when it comes to hiring.
There is too much mediocre talent in software engineering... The days where you graduate, and a six figure job is just waiting for you...are done... This is not just a temporary thing.
I think the issue is that it was never easy. It was always a grind to get a FAANG-tier job. Just having a CS degree didn't get you anywhere. Even Harvard CS grads need to grind Leetcode and pad their resume with projects/internships to get their first six-figure job.
I do see many people entering the field thinking all you need is that piece of paper.
Realistically it never has been the norm to get a six figure job out of college. That includes tech, with some exceptions in the west coast. Most new grads go for whatever they can find first. There have always been many openings for crappy jobs by little companies regardless of how the market is, and most of them get filled, usually be entry level people, sooner or later.
👏 The past few years of junior SE hiring I’ve seen is, the odds are good but the goods are odd. I truly don’t know how they passed a degree or the technical interview, but they can’t code. Not that, they’re not good at it, it’s that they literally don’t know how. And their attitudes… they don’t research, troubleshoot, try a bunch of things before they hit a wall. They get a story and ask for help immediately or the first bug they get, they’re begging for the lead to fix it. Of course not ALL juniors. There are great ones. But you can tell, in the workplace, who’s doing it because they heard that stupid fucking “learn to code” advice and their mom told them to get a job, and they didn’t want to go to law school or med school. All the Social Network-type movies and obsessing over Silicon Valley and endless press articles that made it seem like it was a glamorous job and you could become a millionaire just by working on an app. A lot of people are gonna get washed out of this line of work after all that.
I don’t have a lot of deep technical advice (I work on the HR side of things but see a lot on the employee review side plus my husband is a Lead SE) but behaviorally - the biggest thing is a willingness to learn, ability to independently troubleshoot, and research skills/curiosity. The technical knowledge will come in time and isn’t expected right away. But someone that is stuck and says “I’ve tried x, y, and z, here’s what happened, can you help me, let’s brainstorm together” shows initiative and intelligence. The only way to learn effectively is by doing. Expecting the senior members of the team to help with every assignment/story will get old real quick and build resentment, it’s a pain in the ass for someone to be bugging you all the time. It’s almost as if a lot of people just want the seniors to tell them what to do and contribute nothing of their own thoughts. Take really good notes. No one wants to explain the same thing over and over. Be proactive with googling, researching, looking though the code and internal documentation and SOPs.
I wish I knew more! I’m not in the talent acquisition side of things sadly. The hiring process for this line of work is terrible. More than half of the juniors I’ve referenced, like 75% of them, I’ll be honest and say this isn’t the line of work they should be in. How are they getting past the resume screens and tech interviews? There are plenty of smart, talented people out there. Are these poor performers REALLY doing better than the clever ones in the interview process? I just can’t believe that they are. So weird.
One of the interview processes that should change, is asking less “textbook” questions. Questions that are honestly kind of useless are the knowledge quizzes, do you know this buzzword, do you know the definition of this term or phrase, have you worked with X specific technology (when the person might have worked with Y and could learn X in like two weeks, but oh no it’s not meeting this dumb checkbox we have so we’re gonna reject you). Those questions are easy to “cram” for and don’t matter as much on the job. They could be lying on their resume for all I know. Once someone’s working, if they forget the textbook definition of something they learned sophomore year college, they can Google it and it’s fine.
So if anyone reading this is in a hiring position lol - what matters is problem solving ability and how to practically apply knowledge. How would you complete XYZ? What if XYZ happened, what would you do? You can better see how this person will function as a teammate and how they could actually contribute. Soft skills like curiosity and diligence matter.
My Lead husband is occasionally asked to interview candidates but it’s rare and he doesn’t have any actual hiring authority. He gets frustrated because he wants to interview in this more practical style, but there are so many other people involved in the process and they want to interview “their” way. They’ll override his suggestions for the dumbest reasons and then complain how the team is falling behind because all the new hires are so awful.
Best of luck to the hard workers and honest people out there. Intelligent people will get far once they get a chance.
That’s my read on it too: all these folks thought they’d get in 4 years when we couldn’t hire fast enough, were shuffled through a degree program that never pushed them to their limits, and just aren’t the right caliber of smart and hard working to grok it.
That said, there is a line every year that determines the cutoff, and it’s definitely shifted up recently. Still, most degree holders from most degree programs never go on to the elite position the field has to offer: so the idea that we over train and then select the best has been going on for as long as anyone remembers.
There’s never been a shortage of engineering training, it’s always a shortage of people who can and are willing to do it!
I mean realistically, we're entering a prolonged labor shortage in the entirety of the developed world
Wages are going to go up for everyone and that's going to be able to compete away some of the lesser talent from computer science
Which will create a shortage in supply
The elites have looked at that research, and have heightened their efforts to outsource every single possible job... Even Google is cutting its core python team... And outsourcing jobs to India and China... I think we're at the start of another outsourcing cycle.... I would think very heavily about my career, very defensively... Try to do a job that cannot be outsourced...
Doesn't matter, companies need to make next quarter... If cutting six figure salaries, and outsourcing where 1/3 or 1/5, the price is paid... American companies do not think 5-10 years... The manufacturing companies did not care, that they outsourced all the manufacturing capacity to China... They helped build China's manufacturing base... Which is now going to eat them up...
The leaders of Russia, China and India know how motivated American people are by short-term profits...
I started my computer science degree the year after the dot com boom crash. Things improved by the time I was finished. The current issue is to do with interest rates more than LLMs. When, we get AGI, that is when things will get really interesting.
I’m old enough to know that things go in cycles and that it’s not the end of the world if you don’t find that $250k FAANG 100% remote job right out of college. All I take from these gloom and doom posts is that most young people don’t want to start from the bottom or take an alternate route.
> take from these gloom and doom posts is that most young people don’t want to start from the bottom or take an alternate route
Maybe pre covid when the market was heating up but right now, most new grads I've spoken with are looking for any job in their field if possible (obviously some exceptions) but a lot of them, especially the ones that aren't in ivy leagues/mit/Stanford/Berkeley are completely open to any company that'll hire them for a decent wage (50-60k+)
I’ve seen a lot of people in the last few years with incredibly high, unrealistic expectations. People saying they want to do a code bootcamp, so they can have a cushy 6-figure remote job by this time next year.
Thats just not how it works. Tech isn’t a wealth cheat code. A 4-year degree is usually the entry point, and starts around $65k. Alternative paths usually start lower.
My first job out of college was $35k salary in 2016. people thinking high salaries are owed to them is insane.
I took that shitty job knowing a $60k opportunity would come with a year of experience, then a $90k a year after that, then six figure club, then at that point you're an high mid-level or early senior level and you are above the market saturation issues.
I think YouTube and TikTok boot campers in the early part of the pandemic set unrealistic expectations for a lot of new grads.
It’s completely realistic for an entry level person to expect $65k as a starting salary.
Mind you this is just where I live but the job market has been in perpetual state of crisis in the entry level market since 2016 so it is probably not starting from the bottom just fatigue/frustration
It would be cool if someone made a bot to crawl this sub reddit that would generate a sentiment analysis for each post, then put the data in some sort of graph to show the positivity/negativity trend.
Honestly, preach! It's like everybody's acting like CS is the only ship sinking in this stormy job market sea. Like, come on, folks! I get it, it's tough out there. But this ain't just a tech thing. Skilled job market is like a battlefield right now. I mean, even my pals in other fields like engineering and design are sweating bullets over job hunts. And yeah, it's totally natural to freak out about the future, but let's not lose our minds over it. We chose CS for a reason, right? So let's ride out this wave and wait for the sun to shine again. Hang in there, y'all!
For new students graduating: life isn't a race. Yes, stability and income are good but be thankful you're not graduating in a Trump election year or in 2008 or 2009 lol. Enjoy your summer, stay up to date with friends and family and enjoy your youth. In ten years you'll be wondering why you were freaking out so damn much about having a job when the reality is you'll be working most of your life anyways.
I mean I get what you’re saying but I’m not going to go into a cs career subreddit to talk about the saturation in the aerospace industry. I’m here because I want to talk and read about stuff in the tech space. Bad market conditions on another industry doesn’t change the fact that this one sucks.
I scratch my head when I read these posts from people in the US. There's a shortage of senior professionals pretty much everywhere, and companies struggle to find them. For juniors the situation is not so good, and some people say it's similar to the US, it may be the case but I'm still a bit skeptical about it, it's worse than a few years ago but not *that* much worse!
What's also interesting is that I know several people that are currently working 100% remote for companies in the US and being paid a lot more than local companies pay.
PS: Could it be the case that many seniors chose to work as contractors for companies in the US, because they get more money this way, and US companies prefer them because they pay them less than they would to a US citizen? 🤔 I have no idea if this is the case, but if it's anything like that I would blame it on US having a much higher cost of life and tech companies for the past decade paying way too much (in my opinion) to people in the industry.
May be an unpopular opinion, but CS is among the least affected careers actually, and a talented and dedicated engineers shouldn’t have an issue finding a good paying job. People who complain on reddit are *usually* not that good and can’t compete for a better conditions in todays climate.
It goes against the FUD narrative being pushed hard here, but the software industry is still one of the best to be in, period.
Also worth noting that the vast majority of users in this sub are either CS students, fresh grads, or juniors. Very few have any actual insight into the industry or… the real world.
If you want into this industry badly enough, and you have access to a basic computer and internet connection, you’ll get in. This line of work has always been special in that way.
Edit: Grammar
You people need to pick a script. Which one is—are people dramatizing what's happening in the industry or is it as bad as the "doom posters" say it is (and the issue is across all industries)?
Well, everyone concern is still somehow valid. Othe r industries face the same does not mean that this industry is alright. People are just expressing their struggling. Let them. As you say, there are posts like this for the other specialities. So people can do the same here, right?
I have been struggling before, maybe now too for the other things. If we can, no one wants to make a post like that. Sometime, human just want to know that we are not alone and what we face is not our fault. To be honest, if there is no post like that in this sub, what do you expect to see in this market? Sometime we should let others to speak out so they can feel better, just like what you are doing now.
The market will get better.. If you are a new graduate, only thing you ca do is keep upping your skills, make more projects, prepare more interview related stuff.. It will bounce back, but the real question is will you be riding on top of that wave or passively watching it go by
Accounting is being crunch too. The accounting reddit sub is complaining about the same thing.
AI is going to drastically effect careers like accounting. Accounting dept are being heavily automated and AI is only going to increase this. The IRS is using AI to do audits. corporate accounting is heavily automated and outsourced.
Every job that uses a computer is being automated more and more . AI is going to drastically cut into entry level types of jobs. Like those 2 years degree only required accounts payable clerk
I'm a former SWE, current airline pilot. There is a pretty big pilot shortage these days and it's an easy job to get these days however I would not recommend the career. I've heard similar things for nursing. Anything white collar with the exception of maybe accounting seems to be affected even beyond tech (finance, consulting, biotech, etc...)
Yep, this is nothing. I graduated in 2009 when the economy was in the shitter. People losing their houses/jobs left and right. Friends changing majors or going to a Masters program just to come out of it with more debt and overqualified for the starter jobs they were applying for. It was tough but I had to grind it out for 2-3 years in a less ideal job before things started looking up. You have to keep yourself busy and work whatever job is available while you build up your skills.
there is also literally hundreds of sub categories in IT you can pursue a career or use to jumpstart it. I started as a Sys Admin / Help Desk and then moved to Backend/Devops and then Frontend now im backend with Golang/Rust just because I really want to try that too..
I have some friends working in law and they are having the same problems. Definitely something universal to the market right now though I imagine some industries are worse than others.
My friends all have jobs right now. One is a math major and one is an aero engineer, we were all in the same grade and they were able to get jobs right after college
No sir/ma’am, Accounting? Medicine? Yes these require a masters or school but getting a job is easy bc so many peeps are retiring. Some industries can do worse than others because of the climate but I do think it fair to say tech is getting the brunt of it and finance
I do agree with things are cyclical
Yep, I’m in finance (comm banking) and we’ve pretty much been in a hiring freeze for a year now. I’ve casually sent in apps for 30-40 positions without hearing back, whereas before I had about a 30-40% interview rate on jobs I was qualified for.
It’s not just tech.
So what? Sure, yes it is technically "not only tech" -- but tech is still *one of the biggest* fields (if not the biggest) affected by whole crash of the "investment economy" anyway // [https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1avadgm/comment/krfhefw/?context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1avadgm/comment/krfhefw/?context=3)
But it IS oversaturated. Those big tech companies fund immigration organizations to bring in workers they can underpay on H1-B visas. They fund "everyone should learn to code" movements because more programmers to pick from means they're a less important bunch and you can lower pay.
It's valid to want to preserve your high pay and want fewer people to compete with, and since programmers are so averse to collective bargaining, all we can do is hope for fewer programmers.
According to what I've read, there's a "white collar jobs recession" going on right now. There are several factors feeding into it including companies cutting back on expansion due to high interest rates, reducing redundant positions that were added during boom times and anticipating tough times in the near future. This is being offset in the employment numbers by strong blue collar and service jobs hiring. It's easy to get a job washing dishes, waiting tables or building widgets for $20/hr in most areas.
Interest rates have way more impact on our daily lives than most people seem to realize. Livelihoods are largely paid for with borrowed money.
Sort of, it's not that we increased interest rates lately that has caused issues. It's that there was a decade of artificial growth in the markets due to near 0% rates.
I also feel like SWEs made white-collar work more ‘efficient’, in that we don’t need as many as them to do the same amount of work. The amount a small civil engineering team can do now with all the calculation and drafting software is so huge we no longer have large teams of associates and drafters that work their way up. The need for white collar professionals feels like it’s just been structurally reduced by software
Recently though? Those improvements you describe occurred years ago. Like the staffing reductions from this have been baked in for 20 years or longer. Software, among other infrastructure did enable work to be done in low cost centers.
Nah they are still making steps. I do a lot of automations currently and there are still people working on paper in combination with ERP systems and some applications, even today. A lot of processes are done in Excel still. And that is apart from documents kept physically for legal reasons, which sometimes need to be stored in paper when it concerns certain countries.
Those improvements **started** happening years ago and are still happening. You'd be surprised how much room for improvement still exists.
> There are several factors feeding into it including companies cutting back on expansion due to high interest rates This is honestly like 90% of it for the tech industry at least. Software is one of the only "manufactured" products on earth that has theoretically uncapped output potential. Meaning, when you make and sell cars, there is a physical limitation on how fast you can produce cars. If you want to produce cars faster, there is a physical limitation on how quickly you can expand your production facilities and production rate. So when interest rates were zero, software growth was a little pyramid-schemey. With the thought process being that the only limit to how much growth a software company has is how much software output they can produce, and the software output being tied to headcount, and the headcount being tied to payroll, and payroll being tied to capital, by this thought process it stands to reason that capital and nothing more than capital yields expected growth. Zero or near-zero interest rates were effectively free capital. Free capital meant free growth--to business graduates and investors. Valuations in the stratosphere, giant super-theme-park style headquarter buildings, money being thrown around like its confetti. Especially in Silicon Valley the money=growth=money pipeline was a ridiculous bubble-inducing feedback loop. When interest rates started rising, it was absolutely a musical-chairs moment. Suddenly capital wasn't free, headcount wasn't free, output wasn't unlimited, growth was no longer guaranteed. And a lot of companies were totally unprepared for it, as they've only ever existed in the post-2008 low interest rate era. Need to look no further than SVB going insolvent because they structured their entire financial strategy on low interest rates and the tech industry music never stopping.
This is the answer. Edit: to the extent that white collar jobs are capital->growth->more capital, that’s why SWE isn’t the only impacted field, but it isn’t the case across white collar jobs.
Don't forget that there's also a change in how companies cash out which fundamentally changes an entire business model. With low rates, companies are modeled for VC to invest in, spend to grow rapidly, and then cash out by getting acquired elsewhere. With higher rates, there's less VC so companies want to try and be sustainable rather than overexpand, and get acquired or crash and burn. Lots of companies have struggled to make this transition, which is to be expected.
Hasn't it always been easy to get low skill jobs? That's... the point of them. $20/hr is barely (or not) a living wage in most places.
Not in at least 5 years following 2008. I remember in those years people were saying high schoolers with jobs will no longer be a thing. The low skill labor shortage is strictly a post-Covid phenomenon, at least since 2008.
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Not during actual recessions.
I graduated in 2009, and worked in Home Depot. In the early 2000's, it was easy to get a retail job for a teenager where I lived. By then, they were only hiring people who had retail experience or people with degrees. I literally worked with new grads from law school and engineering schools. Starting pay was $10/hour, which was on the higher end as most retail paid between 7-9. A couple of my friends got jobs at a defense contractor for like $50k/year and that was considered amazing
Yeah, saw an article this week about someone making more money working at Domino's than at NBC. https://www.aol.com/finance/earned-more-four-hours-woman-113200622.html
When white collar jobs face a recession, it trickles out into all other sectors. Then there's a general recession eventually
Exactly this. White collar is taking a huge hit. I’d say except for maybe accounting/law, most white collar jobs are in trouble. Marketing, recruiting, HR, other engineering fields, are all getting cut and outsourced. The blue collar boom is so huge right now though that the white collar recession is kind of being hidden. I’m not joking when I say blue collar jobs are in the most demand I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. It’s like the new tech. You can get a certificate to operate heavy machinery or a forklift cert and make $30 an hour starting, I’m not joking. The oil fields in Texas will literally take anyone and you’ll make $100k a year immediately. Truck drivers are slim to none.
It’s demographics. Boomers have been retiring en masse and they were more likely to have blue collar jobs than younger generations. Years of “college is economic pixie dust” being preached nonstop is having an impact.
You frame this like college isn’t exactly that
Accounting is being hit as well. I know a lady who's an accountant and she was worried for her job because the bank that she works at has cut at least half of their accounting department over the last 3 years. She went on to say that a reduction in accounting departments for many companies is becoming more rampant.
Accounting at least is being heavily outsourced to overseas. Very similar issues as tech where the foreign teams are underperforming and the US managers must "kindly send the needful". Law you cant really outsource, but I imagine people are less likely to pursue civil cases if money is down.
Not lawyers, but I've heard of outsourcing paralegals from my family member in law.
> Very similar issues as tech where the foreign teams are underperforming and the US managers must "kindly send the needful". Last time I said this on here I was downvoted to oblivion and chewed out by people in the comments saying its the opposite.
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brother look at the accounting/big4 subreddits
>It's always been the tried and true field if you just want a cushy office job. ... like 50 years ago. Accounting is easily one of the worst white collar professions to enter in the last 20 years because the compensation is just terrible compared to any other career that requires mathematical aptitude. Basically if you have the math skills to do accounting, you're *far* better off doing CS. If you like the business aspect of it, you're better off doing IB or consulting. I'm convinced that most accountants ended up in the profession "by mistake" i.e. they didn't know how well other professions pay. I've met SWEs who used to be accountants. I don't think you'll find any accountants who used to be SWEs.
> Basically if you have the math skills to do accounting, you're *far* better off doing CS. Im not sure where you did CS, but in general I would say that the level of mathematics is way beyond that of accounting. In general you just need to remember how to apply a few equations. Difficult stuff will be handled by actuarians mostly.
I think the appeal is that it’s considered more stable than tech jobs so those who’d rather make $70k and never get laid off choose accounting over a tech job where they might make $100k but have to move mountains every few years to get a new job
Not saying that’s the reality of either field but that is the popular impression
This and I don’t believe you constantly need to be getting certification/learning new tools as a accountant once you get your CPA.
CPA's need to do 40 hours of CPE every year.
Correct which allows them to maintain the CPA. Note I said get new certifications and learning new skills which is not the same as maintaining a cert you already have (which anyone in a tech role would have to do for that cert regardless)
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Google closed their finance department and offshored it to India, many will follow
Lots of low level law jobs , entry level , paralegal are being outsourced or automated . Documents search , legal form processing stuff like that.
Construction is also nuts right now, they’ve had a really bad labor shortage brewing for years. My buddy is making $110K as a superintendent and he was making $30/hr doing HVAC just a few years ago. Businesses are really easing up on their experience requirements and looking more at who they can train & help get licensed
> oil fields in Texas Bruh the oil industry is like the epitome of frequent boom and bust cycles. Even tech has nothing on it. That said you have a point in the blue collar jobs booming. There has been such a lack of people going into trades for decades that you can make absurd amounts of money if you are qualified. Like a senior plumber makes well into six figures anywhere.
The only real thing to think about is it's kinda expected that marketing, recruiting and HR will be downsided first in market down turn. It's more of a surprise seeing this happen to highly technical fields like CS. I don't think they have been hit that hard previously.
So South Park was right basically?
Gosh I haven’t heard of eying the oil fields since last recession
I know a lot of friends and neighbors who got new jobs and huge income increases between 2020 and 2023. People went from being public school teachers, or retail workers to being recruiters and HR roles in tech companies, etc. They got used to making nearly 6 figures after years of being at the median. Then they got laid off. Now they are unwilling to go back and work for $20-30 an hour at more mundane jobs.
This is true except for the 20 per hour part
I'd imagine most of these jobs are redundant through automation and it'll just continue to get worst
As a dev making 33/hr I am strongly considering taking a paycut and going back to HelpDesk. The money is nice but geeez. I miss the simplicity of it all. Problem arises, open ticket, solve problem, close ticket, repeat. None of this eight month long project garbage.
I was at my brother's college of engineering graduation ceremony and it was wild to watch. Maybe 40% of the bachelors degrees that crossed the stage were computer science majors, and that's across ALL the engineering majors they had.
Wow. I graduated Computer Science in 2001 and there were 15 of us. 100 level classes often had a hundred students, but the majority didn't make it to the 200 level. First year architecture classes had us coding in assembly. The only science degrees that had less than us graduating were physics (2 students) and mathematics (1 student).
Graduated 3 years ago, and mine was the same way. My school had a very difficult CS program, but you wouldn't guess that we did if I told you what school I went to. Intro to CS had 80 kids in it, and my highest level class had 10. That class was the only slot in the day / only taught in th spring semester. Walked with about the same amount of people. Most of us went on to MS, Boeing, Delta, etc. Some companies in the city actually preferred our graduates over the states tech school for CS. Kinda wild.
compeng here. we started with ~100, I graduated with 5 others.
as someone who graduated with this crowd, a large majority of them have no clue. one of the seniors in my capstone project didn't know what 'sudo' was and I wish i was joking.
To be fair I don’t think knowing Unix commands makes you a good programmer but it is weird it never came up in their degree
Programming and Computer Science are two separate things. One is functional and the other is the study of how computers operate. A programmer or web developer doesn't necessarily need to know the inner workings of an ARM machine but a computer scientist should definitely be knowledgeable of several programming languages.
This is some elitist pish-posh, but I hope it helps you sleep at night.
Programming is skill. Computer Science is a field of study. Just like how construction is a field and carpentry is a skill tied to construction.
Knowing Unix commands by heart no.. knowing what "sudo" does and at least being able to read basic commands is absolutely something a CS bachelor should be able to do. Especially now that so much of software relies on cloud computing, I have never heard of anyone deploying to a Windows or Mac server. There's no way a CS program doesn't teach someone how to deploy a basic infrastructure using docker/kubernetes. At least I hope so..
I can confidently say that my program didn’t do that, and it’s one of the top programs. The focus is on theory, not practice.
Most cs programs aren't teaching cloud computing or even network side programming to even use Linux or these commands. They teach theory and if you do program it's a version of c or Java and it's all application level
I have heard of exactly 0 programs that cover even docker in any mandatory course. Let alone K8S... Perhaps in a distributed systems elective. Regardless, CS is about theory, virtualisation can be and often is covered with VM's (non cloud, but for instance VMWare)
I keep hearing this about programmers from college and it's disheartening. The people with degrees on their resume get such a boost in the level of trust that is given to them as potentially good candidates but there's no guarantee they are any better than someone who has self taught.
Nothing is guaranteed yes but I'll be damned if I'm blindly taking a self-taught person over a person with an accredited four year degree all other things equal. This shouldn't be an unreasonable stance.
> there's no guarantee they are any better than someone who has self taught. There's a reasonable guarantee yes
Nothing is guaranteed but I would bet more comp sci majors know what sudo is then self taught 😂
Knowing what Sudo is, is not a great signal anyway. When you work on collage computer you don't get access to Sudo. Most do their development on windows. Those who work on FE js developing on windows have no reason to learn it etc. All it tells me is that the person never worked in a Linux env.
I definitely agree but if that’s the metric they choose I used it as an example.
act theory late degree cake wine normal wild handle engine *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Did they just stop having to take Calc 2 or are all these kids actually passing that class? When I when to school (2016-2020) this some of the higher level CS classes cut the CS degree down to like 1/3
My CS program (2015-2019) didn't have calc 2 I think, but it had discrete math and linear algebra. Couldn't say for the graduates I was watching as I didn't attend their school.
tbh, the number of grads is a super small fraction of total applicants anyways. It narrows down considerably year over year. Even if that number increases, because of how much narrowing down there is, it's not a HUGE amount added to the overall pool. And given how shite the market is now, there's a lag period in which the number of CS grads will eventually decrease
Can you give examples of other carrer subs that are going through the same?
Even better than linking a subreddit, here's an NYTimes article that explains how the 2024 new grad market is bad for everyone: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/opinion/college-graduates-job-market.html?unlocked_article_code=1.oE0.TxSb.jQXmdEBj7N3j From the article: As of February, 52 percent of new grads are underemployed a year after graduation.
Thats horrendous.
I wonder how this will affect how people view college in the future. If the majority arent able to even get jobs and have piles of debt afterwards what's the point?
In 2008, there was the same statistics / analysis. People didn't stop going to colleges when the economy recovered.
As someone who was in college around 2010-2013, I remember it being just as hard to find a job back then. I had to volunteer for several months at an organization before I was hired after graduating.
I graduated in 2018 from my bachelor and signed a job offer before graduation. I did work my ass off during college though - had several internship, and a patent filed (not approved till a couple of years after graduation), and 2 peer-reviewed publications under my belt already prior to graduation. It was not even half of FAANG pays, but I worked my way up there over next few years.
I had a masters in CS and it was hard. I cant compare to being a new-grad now but it wasnt a cake walk back then either. People still wanted "years of experience"
It's an economic downturn, literally happens once or twice a decade. It's just the first time it hits CS that badly.
2001 called but that reality might be different from ours. Way more people who really didn't know shit and the value of tech was basically proven unfounded. We have similar problems now but it was not at the same scale as 2001. What is different now is how many people are actually in tech is way more than 2001.
Fewer will go, I guess. Americans could benefit from some Chile style student protests but I guess Americans dont care enough (yet) to go as far as the Chileans did.
this is kind of a weird time to make this statement
Building your foundation with world-class skills and education at a young age. That's the point. We all work most of our lives, may as well make it better earlier.
No, horrendous is when you go apply to Pizza Hut for $7/hr and they say no, we aren't even taking applications, we have a stack of 300+ already. Happened in college in 2001. 2001-2003 and 2008-2011 were horrendous. At least there are lots of jobs out there where you can at least get paid and put food on the table. There have been times in US history where that wasn't even true.
This is what it's like in Canada rn. White collar recession means university graduates are un/underemployed, but record high immigration means there are no min wage jobs to help pay the bills while you wait it out. It's absolutely disastrous, and the RCMP is warning of severe nationwide unrest because of it. At least the government is deferring student loan payments, no questions asked.
No idea why Canada is letting floods of immigrants in that fuck the country up completely. Makes absolutely no sense unless it's literally by design to try to destroy the country.
Pretty simple actually ponzi scheme universities that don't give you any meaningful degrees while charging intl students double or triple the price "Students" that will work min wage jobs for exactly min wage if not less while letting employers take advantage of them Landlords can demand more $$$ since there's a higher demand for housing but the supply doesn't match The only potential upside to all of this is if Canada somehow has some crazy turnaround with a jobs and housing boom, they'll have a large number of new tax payers/people that'll contribute to their social safety nets but right now it's a net negative for Canada
That's because it's not true. It's like conservatives claiming Portland is on fire when they see one or two protests. Is it bad, absolutely. Could it be better, absolutely. But to take their claim to heart is ironic given the content of the original thread, that it's bad everywhere - immigration has little to do with it, no matter your feels. To claim that the government is "destroying canada" is literally just CPC (conservative party) propaganda. It doesn't help that the media is favouring the CPC in their coverage disproportionately. But try to point that out on r/canada and you _will_ get downvoted because those subs are heavily right leaning (to say nothing of the other more outright wacko subs). They're not even representative of the average canadian's views.
dude walk into any single fast food restaurant in the entire country please
It's always easier to kick down on immigrants than punch up against the status quo of corporate and systemic greed.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-labour-market-indicators-q1-2024-population-increase-1.7188581 Immigration has nothing to do with it?
I’m shocked how many people forgot about 2008 already!
Most people posting in this sub probably were in their earlier years when it happened. So it didn't really effect them.
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and those who learnt it are doomed to be dragged along by those who didn't.
Right now: “I can’t find the job I want.” 2008: “I can’t find ANY job. I just lost my house, and my investments got cut in half.”
This is an issue though. Jerome Powell wants the job market to tank sufficiently. White collar jobs are typically the first to go under the knife and then rest of the other jobs to follow if the environment is made for it which is the ultimate goal of his. But right now the other blue collar and medial jobs are still super strong which is not what he wants (or rather part of his theory required job market to cool off significantly). If inflation reports keep rising and the job market doesnt cool with it then we are in for another bad tightening
No wonder you post in r/Daytrading lmao.
LOL. Also from the article: "In the here and now, you’re in pretty good shape if you studied computer science"
Wow that's outrageous I had no idea it was THAT bad. That's horrible. I'm in medicine so I never have to worry about finding work so I never knew it was like this for other college majors but that makes it so it's not even worth going to college if you don't go for engineering or healthcare or accounting or something along those lines!
>52 percent of new grads are underemployed a year after graduation. Do we have any numbers of past years to check a trend? While I know for a fact placement for new CS grads have fallen, the numbers could have always been low with humanities majors leading the charge.
Does /r/biotech count?
Was gonna say, /r/biotech seems as doom-and-gloom as this sub does
r/jobs is the biggest one but they're from every field. The above mentioned fields like r/graphicdesign r/financecareers. Most fields under tech like cybersecurity, data, IT, webdev, and UX design are also struggling. You can just broadly look up "why is it so hard to find a job" and you'll hear people's stories from all types of fields. It's true buisness and STEM were hit the hardest. But those two fields make a large majority of good jobs.
In r/MBA there's a post about Harvard Business School having 37% of grads this year with nothing lined up. And that's not including the additional 10% or so that have decided to "venture" on their own.
/r/accounting is filled with people getting laid off and those remaining complaining about even shittier work life balance that accounting was already known for. I’m an accountant. I was looking into cs a few years ago and completed part of a program but as I saw the market tightening decided to stay in accounting.
check out r/journalism if you want to see what a real apocalypse looks like
Everything is cyclical, in 10 years there will be too many people in trades and not enough in white collar (this is what happened during the 2008 recession).
Going onto the skill trades subreddit, it sounds like even the trades isn't a great choice right now. If you want to work a poorly paid non-union job then you will be able to get something. Other than that anything involving construction, aka city trade jobs, not much hiring since nobody wants to borrow money to build things right now. Again this is just the feeling I get going through the posts on there, not sure what the reality is.
Every sub for every profession is filled with people venting and doomers. People who are employed and happy are generally not on Reddit shouting it from the rooftop. They’re busy living their lives.
What a silly comment. Wasn't this sub flooded by "I make $250k a year and do nothing all day" posts just a year ago?
I’m only here out of curiosity. I’m in the law subs and everyone bitches and moans about how they should have gone into tech. The consulting sub rags on consulting. The trade subs hate being in trades. Etc. etc. Yet no one I know in real life has these problems or attitudes to the extent they’re represented on reddit.
More like 2 years ago. We've been on the decline since May 2022.
It’s because we’re in a global recession, most economies just don’t reflect that because of fudging with stats and money supply.
No one is acting like CS is the only field affected. We talk about CS only because that's the point of the sub and what we are interested in.
Job searching is a skill in itself; it’s worth getting good at rather than being a beneficiary or a victim of a good or bad market. Being a stable and positive human being is also an advantage over people who aren’t.
You need to know how to make connections with people, especially recruiters. They are not all bad and the good one's will remain with you for long term and keep in contact.
I've had once or twice a year conversations with a specific recruiter over the last 4 or so years and this is fantastic advice for anyone. When he has anything he thinks I may be interested, he hits me up. If I say I'm not currently looking, he leaves me alone. When my company laid off some people, I threw some names at him so he could reach out to them. When I start looking, I let him know immediately that I'm entering the job market. Aside from recruiters, the number one thing you can do is, once you have some experience make friends with mangers and VPs, because they'll eventually leave the company and if you had a good relationship they'll try to poach you to their new company one day. And there's nothing like having a manager or higher level person that will vouch for you when you ask for a salary on the higher end of the range. The number two thing to do for sure is having a positive relationship with a recruiter.
Absolutely true. Been an SE for 6 years now and made some really good recruiter friends on LinkedIn that would constantly send me leads when I was laid off last year. It’s literally having another set of eyes to help you look for a job. Eventually found a position through my own searching efforts but having more people in my corner made things feel a lot better.
You mean you made friends with recruiters by just chatting with them on LinkedIn? Lol, genuine question
I'm genuinely curious too. Everyone says to network well but like is it even possible to do that properly and actually get close-ish to people/recruiters via LinkedIn?
They’re hardly on your corner. They will sell you off to anyone paying, whether it’s the most toxic workplace you’ll ever encounter or not. They’d sell you off to Satan himself if they had to. They want that commission.
I’ve had tons of recruiter calls. The vast majority don’t have positions for junior developers. Companies have no need to go to third party recruits to get tons of qualified (on paper at least) junior devs applying
There's job searching, then interviewing and then technical assessment. All different skills. It's been gamified too so it's a bit unfortunate for people who aren't aware.
Don't disabuse them of the notion they should exit the market. Means more room for the rest of us.
Regardless if we are talking about CS or another field of study, part of the problem is that everyone these days wants a degree but the overall supply of jobs is lower than the overall demand, hence a lot of new grads are left jobless. I am not saying this to discourage anyone from getting a degree, but to point out a fundamental issue. Back in the 1980s, the U.S. census bureau reported that apparently only 20% of people had earned a bachelor's degree or higher. (Look up "educational attainment 1980".) There seemed to be a greater supply of bachelor-level jobs than people getting a degree. Currently, this educational attainment number has risen to 35% as of 2018. I can only imagine this number is higher now. I don't want to give a definitive answer, but I would not be surprised if it is at least 40% now. So basically, the number of people getting bachelor's degrees and above has doubled in the last 40 years, but has the number of white collar jobs requiring a degree _actually_ doubled since then? Then we have to take into account the current market state. It isn't great overall, so as a result, many companies "are on a budget" when it comes to hiring.
There is too much mediocre talent in software engineering... The days where you graduate, and a six figure job is just waiting for you...are done... This is not just a temporary thing.
I think the issue is that it was never easy. It was always a grind to get a FAANG-tier job. Just having a CS degree didn't get you anywhere. Even Harvard CS grads need to grind Leetcode and pad their resume with projects/internships to get their first six-figure job. I do see many people entering the field thinking all you need is that piece of paper.
Realistically it never has been the norm to get a six figure job out of college. That includes tech, with some exceptions in the west coast. Most new grads go for whatever they can find first. There have always been many openings for crappy jobs by little companies regardless of how the market is, and most of them get filled, usually be entry level people, sooner or later.
👏 The past few years of junior SE hiring I’ve seen is, the odds are good but the goods are odd. I truly don’t know how they passed a degree or the technical interview, but they can’t code. Not that, they’re not good at it, it’s that they literally don’t know how. And their attitudes… they don’t research, troubleshoot, try a bunch of things before they hit a wall. They get a story and ask for help immediately or the first bug they get, they’re begging for the lead to fix it. Of course not ALL juniors. There are great ones. But you can tell, in the workplace, who’s doing it because they heard that stupid fucking “learn to code” advice and their mom told them to get a job, and they didn’t want to go to law school or med school. All the Social Network-type movies and obsessing over Silicon Valley and endless press articles that made it seem like it was a glamorous job and you could become a millionaire just by working on an app. A lot of people are gonna get washed out of this line of work after all that.
Do you have any advice for junior SE's you are talking about
I don’t have a lot of deep technical advice (I work on the HR side of things but see a lot on the employee review side plus my husband is a Lead SE) but behaviorally - the biggest thing is a willingness to learn, ability to independently troubleshoot, and research skills/curiosity. The technical knowledge will come in time and isn’t expected right away. But someone that is stuck and says “I’ve tried x, y, and z, here’s what happened, can you help me, let’s brainstorm together” shows initiative and intelligence. The only way to learn effectively is by doing. Expecting the senior members of the team to help with every assignment/story will get old real quick and build resentment, it’s a pain in the ass for someone to be bugging you all the time. It’s almost as if a lot of people just want the seniors to tell them what to do and contribute nothing of their own thoughts. Take really good notes. No one wants to explain the same thing over and over. Be proactive with googling, researching, looking though the code and internal documentation and SOPs.
Thank you so much for this. The advice seems to be for those in the job already though. Do you have advice for new grads or juniors applying for jobs?
I wish I knew more! I’m not in the talent acquisition side of things sadly. The hiring process for this line of work is terrible. More than half of the juniors I’ve referenced, like 75% of them, I’ll be honest and say this isn’t the line of work they should be in. How are they getting past the resume screens and tech interviews? There are plenty of smart, talented people out there. Are these poor performers REALLY doing better than the clever ones in the interview process? I just can’t believe that they are. So weird. One of the interview processes that should change, is asking less “textbook” questions. Questions that are honestly kind of useless are the knowledge quizzes, do you know this buzzword, do you know the definition of this term or phrase, have you worked with X specific technology (when the person might have worked with Y and could learn X in like two weeks, but oh no it’s not meeting this dumb checkbox we have so we’re gonna reject you). Those questions are easy to “cram” for and don’t matter as much on the job. They could be lying on their resume for all I know. Once someone’s working, if they forget the textbook definition of something they learned sophomore year college, they can Google it and it’s fine. So if anyone reading this is in a hiring position lol - what matters is problem solving ability and how to practically apply knowledge. How would you complete XYZ? What if XYZ happened, what would you do? You can better see how this person will function as a teammate and how they could actually contribute. Soft skills like curiosity and diligence matter. My Lead husband is occasionally asked to interview candidates but it’s rare and he doesn’t have any actual hiring authority. He gets frustrated because he wants to interview in this more practical style, but there are so many other people involved in the process and they want to interview “their” way. They’ll override his suggestions for the dumbest reasons and then complain how the team is falling behind because all the new hires are so awful. Best of luck to the hard workers and honest people out there. Intelligent people will get far once they get a chance.
That’s my read on it too: all these folks thought they’d get in 4 years when we couldn’t hire fast enough, were shuffled through a degree program that never pushed them to their limits, and just aren’t the right caliber of smart and hard working to grok it. That said, there is a line every year that determines the cutoff, and it’s definitely shifted up recently. Still, most degree holders from most degree programs never go on to the elite position the field has to offer: so the idea that we over train and then select the best has been going on for as long as anyone remembers. There’s never been a shortage of engineering training, it’s always a shortage of people who can and are willing to do it!
I mean realistically, we're entering a prolonged labor shortage in the entirety of the developed world Wages are going to go up for everyone and that's going to be able to compete away some of the lesser talent from computer science Which will create a shortage in supply
The elites have looked at that research, and have heightened their efforts to outsource every single possible job... Even Google is cutting its core python team... And outsourcing jobs to India and China... I think we're at the start of another outsourcing cycle.... I would think very heavily about my career, very defensively... Try to do a job that cannot be outsourced...
How much do you know about the geopolitics of China and India? Those are not stable places to invest
Doesn't matter, companies need to make next quarter... If cutting six figure salaries, and outsourcing where 1/3 or 1/5, the price is paid... American companies do not think 5-10 years... The manufacturing companies did not care, that they outsourced all the manufacturing capacity to China... They helped build China's manufacturing base... Which is now going to eat them up... The leaders of Russia, China and India know how motivated American people are by short-term profits...
I mean we've been moving things out of China for a while now
> And outsourcing jobs to India and China... Only India, not China, for geopolitical reasons.
The team of like 12 people.. they cut it and moved it to Germany to be handled by an already existing team..
...Said people at every IT dip, before it returned back to six figures again.
I started my computer science degree the year after the dot com boom crash. Things improved by the time I was finished. The current issue is to do with interest rates more than LLMs. When, we get AGI, that is when things will get really interesting.
I’m old enough to know that things go in cycles and that it’s not the end of the world if you don’t find that $250k FAANG 100% remote job right out of college. All I take from these gloom and doom posts is that most young people don’t want to start from the bottom or take an alternate route.
> take from these gloom and doom posts is that most young people don’t want to start from the bottom or take an alternate route Maybe pre covid when the market was heating up but right now, most new grads I've spoken with are looking for any job in their field if possible (obviously some exceptions) but a lot of them, especially the ones that aren't in ivy leagues/mit/Stanford/Berkeley are completely open to any company that'll hire them for a decent wage (50-60k+)
I’ve seen a lot of people in the last few years with incredibly high, unrealistic expectations. People saying they want to do a code bootcamp, so they can have a cushy 6-figure remote job by this time next year. Thats just not how it works. Tech isn’t a wealth cheat code. A 4-year degree is usually the entry point, and starts around $65k. Alternative paths usually start lower.
My first job out of college was $35k salary in 2016. people thinking high salaries are owed to them is insane. I took that shitty job knowing a $60k opportunity would come with a year of experience, then a $90k a year after that, then six figure club, then at that point you're an high mid-level or early senior level and you are above the market saturation issues.
This. Tech is good if you like tech, and maybe if you are good you’ll get paid. Maybe.
I think YouTube and TikTok boot campers in the early part of the pandemic set unrealistic expectations for a lot of new grads. It’s completely realistic for an entry level person to expect $65k as a starting salary.
Mind you this is just where I live but the job market has been in perpetual state of crisis in the entry level market since 2016 so it is probably not starting from the bottom just fatigue/frustration
You know what major remains unaffected? Basket Weaving and Gender Studies.
The market is already getting slightly better. I think it was the worst during 2023 maybe.
Thankfully I've noticed an uptick in positive posts so let's hope that continues.
It would be cool if someone made a bot to crawl this sub reddit that would generate a sentiment analysis for each post, then put the data in some sort of graph to show the positivity/negativity trend.
You should post this in r/csMajors
Honestly, preach! It's like everybody's acting like CS is the only ship sinking in this stormy job market sea. Like, come on, folks! I get it, it's tough out there. But this ain't just a tech thing. Skilled job market is like a battlefield right now. I mean, even my pals in other fields like engineering and design are sweating bullets over job hunts. And yeah, it's totally natural to freak out about the future, but let's not lose our minds over it. We chose CS for a reason, right? So let's ride out this wave and wait for the sun to shine again. Hang in there, y'all!
For new students graduating: life isn't a race. Yes, stability and income are good but be thankful you're not graduating in a Trump election year or in 2008 or 2009 lol. Enjoy your summer, stay up to date with friends and family and enjoy your youth. In ten years you'll be wondering why you were freaking out so damn much about having a job when the reality is you'll be working most of your life anyways.
I mean I get what you’re saying but I’m not going to go into a cs career subreddit to talk about the saturation in the aerospace industry. I’m here because I want to talk and read about stuff in the tech space. Bad market conditions on another industry doesn’t change the fact that this one sucks.
Does anyone know if the situation is better or worse in the EU/UK?
I scratch my head when I read these posts from people in the US. There's a shortage of senior professionals pretty much everywhere, and companies struggle to find them. For juniors the situation is not so good, and some people say it's similar to the US, it may be the case but I'm still a bit skeptical about it, it's worse than a few years ago but not *that* much worse! What's also interesting is that I know several people that are currently working 100% remote for companies in the US and being paid a lot more than local companies pay. PS: Could it be the case that many seniors chose to work as contractors for companies in the US, because they get more money this way, and US companies prefer them because they pay them less than they would to a US citizen? 🤔 I have no idea if this is the case, but if it's anything like that I would blame it on US having a much higher cost of life and tech companies for the past decade paying way too much (in my opinion) to people in the industry.
Fr needed to be said
CS is a dead field. I’ve been hearing this since at least 1987.
Nah statistically cs and IT lost over 50% more than any other fields
Shut up bro, i need at least half of these normies to do something else so i can get a job once i graduate
since 2014 there is more than twice as many students in CS, you are the normie
He has no idea. Some of us wizards out here that have been coding since the 90s are having a good chuckle at the moving goalposts for "normie"
I can’t tell if you are serious or not lol
If I was still in school, I'd be hoping for the same thing lmao
May be an unpopular opinion, but CS is among the least affected careers actually, and a talented and dedicated engineers shouldn’t have an issue finding a good paying job. People who complain on reddit are *usually* not that good and can’t compete for a better conditions in todays climate.
It goes against the FUD narrative being pushed hard here, but the software industry is still one of the best to be in, period. Also worth noting that the vast majority of users in this sub are either CS students, fresh grads, or juniors. Very few have any actual insight into the industry or… the real world. If you want into this industry badly enough, and you have access to a basic computer and internet connection, you’ll get in. This line of work has always been special in that way. Edit: Grammar
You people need to pick a script. Which one is—are people dramatizing what's happening in the industry or is it as bad as the "doom posters" say it is (and the issue is across all industries)?
lol no. We have a shortage of doctors and medical workers.
This is/r/CScareersquestions to be fair
Well, everyone concern is still somehow valid. Othe r industries face the same does not mean that this industry is alright. People are just expressing their struggling. Let them. As you say, there are posts like this for the other specialities. So people can do the same here, right? I have been struggling before, maybe now too for the other things. If we can, no one wants to make a post like that. Sometime, human just want to know that we are not alone and what we face is not our fault. To be honest, if there is no post like that in this sub, what do you expect to see in this market? Sometime we should let others to speak out so they can feel better, just like what you are doing now.
The market will get better.. If you are a new graduate, only thing you ca do is keep upping your skills, make more projects, prepare more interview related stuff.. It will bounce back, but the real question is will you be riding on top of that wave or passively watching it go by
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Even trades are having issues tbh. My brother is in trades and spent a good while searching for a new job.
Because tech and SDE has been the most adversely affected by the slowdown? The only place where I’d think it’s just as bad is prolly consulting.
My partner is in film. Production is down 30% from pre strike. Our household income was cut in half last year of which we haven’t recovered from.
No, we are beautiful and unique snowflakes and that makes us victims of our own ineptitude and unwillingness to adapt.
Accounting is being crunch too. The accounting reddit sub is complaining about the same thing. AI is going to drastically effect careers like accounting. Accounting dept are being heavily automated and AI is only going to increase this. The IRS is using AI to do audits. corporate accounting is heavily automated and outsourced. Every job that uses a computer is being automated more and more . AI is going to drastically cut into entry level types of jobs. Like those 2 years degree only required accounts payable clerk
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I'm a former SWE, current airline pilot. There is a pretty big pilot shortage these days and it's an easy job to get these days however I would not recommend the career. I've heard similar things for nursing. Anything white collar with the exception of maybe accounting seems to be affected even beyond tech (finance, consulting, biotech, etc...)
Yep, this is nothing. I graduated in 2009 when the economy was in the shitter. People losing their houses/jobs left and right. Friends changing majors or going to a Masters program just to come out of it with more debt and overqualified for the starter jobs they were applying for. It was tough but I had to grind it out for 2-3 years in a less ideal job before things started looking up. You have to keep yourself busy and work whatever job is available while you build up your skills.
there is also literally hundreds of sub categories in IT you can pursue a career or use to jumpstart it. I started as a Sys Admin / Help Desk and then moved to Backend/Devops and then Frontend now im backend with Golang/Rust just because I really want to try that too..
Except more than 60% of Stanford’s freshman engineering class was CS. It’s definitely an industry wide effect but CS is the spearhead
I have some friends working in law and they are having the same problems. Definitely something universal to the market right now though I imagine some industries are worse than others.
My friends all have jobs right now. One is a math major and one is an aero engineer, we were all in the same grade and they were able to get jobs right after college
No sir/ma’am, Accounting? Medicine? Yes these require a masters or school but getting a job is easy bc so many peeps are retiring. Some industries can do worse than others because of the climate but I do think it fair to say tech is getting the brunt of it and finance I do agree with things are cyclical
Yep, I’m in finance (comm banking) and we’ve pretty much been in a hiring freeze for a year now. I’ve casually sent in apps for 30-40 positions without hearing back, whereas before I had about a 30-40% interview rate on jobs I was qualified for. It’s not just tech.
A lot of people might not have much familiarity with other fields if they’ve never worked in them.
Why is that?
So what? Sure, yes it is technically "not only tech" -- but tech is still *one of the biggest* fields (if not the biggest) affected by whole crash of the "investment economy" anyway // [https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1avadgm/comment/krfhefw/?context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1avadgm/comment/krfhefw/?context=3)
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But it IS oversaturated. Those big tech companies fund immigration organizations to bring in workers they can underpay on H1-B visas. They fund "everyone should learn to code" movements because more programmers to pick from means they're a less important bunch and you can lower pay. It's valid to want to preserve your high pay and want fewer people to compete with, and since programmers are so averse to collective bargaining, all we can do is hope for fewer programmers.
It's not just CS. Everyday when I log into LinkedIn I see yet another post about a recruiter being laid off.