Almost 200k Job Cuts in Tech Pushes New Grads to Wall Street(bloomberg.com)
bloomberg.com
Almost 200k Job Cuts in Tech Pushes New Grads to Wall Street
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-23/how-to-get-a-job-in-2023-young-workers-eye-finance-with-tech-struggling
191 comments
I think it's further back than 5 years, beginning prior to even The Social Network movie. I would argue that Apple probably made tech cool for normies, despite not being a modern-day Apple user.
The iPod happened. Smartphones went mainstream, gaming stopped being just for kids and men in basements. A lot changed with the adoption of tech.
The Social Network movie was indicative of a big shift in how the public felt about nerds in tech. It might not have shown Zuck in a particularly positive light, but the fascination was there. Same goes for the passing of Steve Jobs.
Felt like everybody had an idea for an app about 12 years ago, even though most of them were bad or already done! Also seemed like a lot of teens were going to college to "learn to develop apps".
The seeming accessibility of consumer technology brought down the perceived barrier of admission to doing things with tech.
The iPod happened. Smartphones went mainstream, gaming stopped being just for kids and men in basements. A lot changed with the adoption of tech.
The Social Network movie was indicative of a big shift in how the public felt about nerds in tech. It might not have shown Zuck in a particularly positive light, but the fascination was there. Same goes for the passing of Steve Jobs.
Felt like everybody had an idea for an app about 12 years ago, even though most of them were bad or already done! Also seemed like a lot of teens were going to college to "learn to develop apps".
The seeming accessibility of consumer technology brought down the perceived barrier of admission to doing things with tech.
When I first got into tech, it wasn't cool, it was nerd stuff (as a pajorative). I remember it first started being cool when the internet went commercial. It became really cool when the iPhone was released.
I think tech is currently undergoing a long overdue culling period. I recall one in 2001ish and in 2008ish. All the people who got into it because of the money and don't particularly care for it will move on. Some people who do care for it will also get culled. It's not pretty.
I think tech is currently undergoing a long overdue culling period. I recall one in 2001ish and in 2008ish. All the people who got into it because of the money and don't particularly care for it will move on. Some people who do care for it will also get culled. It's not pretty.
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I got into it for the money and became very disillusioned with the tech industry long ago. I don't plan on going anywhere though, just gonna continue coasting in my high-pay+easy job and stay focused on family and hobbies.
One of the things that annoyed me about this field is the obsession with ones career and over-the-top manufactured enthusiasm for very mundane projects. Sometimes a job is just a job.
One of the things that annoyed me about this field is the obsession with ones career and over-the-top manufactured enthusiasm for very mundane projects. Sometimes a job is just a job.
It flipped for me at 35. I went from obsessed with the grind/culture/career garbage and just had an aha moment where I said, "hey i have an easy job, with hours that are so flexible it feels illegal, and my pay is double what most of my friends' dual-incomes are". I started to just focus on hobbies and family and less on work.
I don't live to work anymore, I work to live.
I still get stellar marks at work, i know my shit and i'm good at it. But the illusion has worn off for me. It's just a job. I meet deadlines, but I also push back on deadlines that require crunch time or weekend work. I push back on weekend or late time work completely now. I'm not embarrassed anymore to say "I don't want to work on the weekend, and its unreasonable for you to expect me to, so that project will get done next week".
My job is a means for providing for a comfortable retirement, and a comfortable life. I enjoy tech, but I enjoy my hobbies more. My hobbies keep me healthy and happy, work doesn't do either of those two things. Work is work, that's fine. But let's call it what it is. Let's not forget to live too.
I don't live to work anymore, I work to live.
I still get stellar marks at work, i know my shit and i'm good at it. But the illusion has worn off for me. It's just a job. I meet deadlines, but I also push back on deadlines that require crunch time or weekend work. I push back on weekend or late time work completely now. I'm not embarrassed anymore to say "I don't want to work on the weekend, and its unreasonable for you to expect me to, so that project will get done next week".
My job is a means for providing for a comfortable retirement, and a comfortable life. I enjoy tech, but I enjoy my hobbies more. My hobbies keep me healthy and happy, work doesn't do either of those two things. Work is work, that's fine. But let's call it what it is. Let's not forget to live too.
Honestly, this is the sort I'm rooting to be culled out. I'm all for a healthy work-life balance but have no sympathy for the "rest and vest" folks - there are absolutely people getting paid in the top 1% who work ~25 hours a week and do absolutely nothing useful. Meanwhile, there are plenty of critical teams drowning in work that can't get additional headcount because of layoffs and the fact they don't have the right buzzword in their team name. If you're taking up a seat and coasting, someone else is paying the price.
Unfortunately FAANG rating systems aren't great and often reward vanity projects going nowhere over the work keeping the company afloat, so I entirely believe that's possible even while having good ratings.
Unfortunately FAANG rating systems aren't great and often reward vanity projects going nowhere over the work keeping the company afloat, so I entirely believe that's possible even while having good ratings.
Agreed with the culling part. I write code for the job and also after hours as my hobby. I wait for the weekend to work on harder/more experimental stuff. I remember the days when I was surrounded by people like me. These days all I hear is 'it's just a job that provides for my hobbies'. And the decline in the work quality is so obvious. And the level of bullshittery and invented office language is through the roof.
There is no way these two things aren't connected.
There is no way these two things aren't connected.
Any industry that can't sustain itself with a majority of workers who are "just doing it as a job" is doomed to fail.
I say this after doing SW development for a few decades. You can't count on "passion," "rockstars" or "10x developers." You can only count on the slogs who show up, do a good job and go home.
I say this after doing SW development for a few decades. You can't count on "passion," "rockstars" or "10x developers." You can only count on the slogs who show up, do a good job and go home.
It was doing just fine before people with the "just a job" attitude showed up. Definitely not failing.
The "just a job" people have always been there. You don't notice them because they just get shit done and then go home without making a big deal about it.
Cool, the rest of us have other hobbies. You’re not better than us, you’re just one dimensional. That’s a drag on work quality in an entirely different way.
No. It's not a drag on work quality. Quite the opposite. The fact that people look down upon this kind of passion is exactly what I am talking about when saying that the quality of software is declining. People who view it as "just a job" don't get to high performance levels.
And since they are the majority they get to decide. And they decide to choose mediocrity. Consoling themselves that "good code isn't that important", "I'll do it next week", and other excuses.
And since they are the majority they get to decide. And they decide to choose mediocrity. Consoling themselves that "good code isn't that important", "I'll do it next week", and other excuses.
It can be a drag on work quality. An engineer that dabbles in design hobbies on the side can provide valuable UX ideas that will make the whole product excellent whereas an engineer that nerds out on the latest code trend will pitch rewriting the whole product in Rust at the 11th hour as if any user gives a shit.
I’ve worked with plenty of people like you and some of them wouldn’t know a good product if it smacked them in the face. Most products don’t need more engineering capabilities, they need people involved with excellence in multiple skills.
Apple is an embodiment of this. None of their engineering is bleeding edge but they make categorically redefining products. People that nerd out over something like Linux wouldn’t get it.
I’ve worked with plenty of people like you and some of them wouldn’t know a good product if it smacked them in the face. Most products don’t need more engineering capabilities, they need people involved with excellence in multiple skills.
Apple is an embodiment of this. None of their engineering is bleeding edge but they make categorically redefining products. People that nerd out over something like Linux wouldn’t get it.
I have yet to meet a software engineer who is highly competent and also suggests rewriting a working application in Rust at the 11th hour. In fact the people you are talking about are mostly juniors who read something in an article on a random webpage.
By the way you are talking, no, you have not worked with people like me. Most products are garbage because of poor planning, poor market research and bad/rushed engineering.
Tell me you don't know anything about Apple without telling me that you don't know anything about Apple. A lot of their engineering is absolutely bleeding edge. Right now I am working on improving/adding features to a real time ray tracing renderer that works at 30+ fps on the latest iPhones 14 Pro. Most people's desktop PCs cannot do real time ray tracing and yet Apple does it on a phone. But I guess that is not bleeding edge...
By the way you are talking, no, you have not worked with people like me. Most products are garbage because of poor planning, poor market research and bad/rushed engineering.
Tell me you don't know anything about Apple without telling me that you don't know anything about Apple. A lot of their engineering is absolutely bleeding edge. Right now I am working on improving/adding features to a real time ray tracing renderer that works at 30+ fps on the latest iPhones 14 Pro. Most people's desktop PCs cannot do real time ray tracing and yet Apple does it on a phone. But I guess that is not bleeding edge...
But for the person above, it's not like them working harder will help the teams that actually do need more people but aren't getting it.
Individually, perhaps not. In aggregate, there definitely could be more resources made available for critical services if you could make the org 20% more efficient just by getting rid of people who think they're entitled to a huge paycheck for chilling.
Those all read like great reasons to cull and replace a great deal of tech management.
> "I don't want to work on the weekend, and its unreasonable for you to expect me to, so that project will get done next week"
Balls the size of spacehoppers. I love it.
Balls the size of spacehoppers. I love it.
>I got into it for the money
I got into it for the passion, but I don't have it as much as I did. I can't imagine doing something else like marketing or accounting though.
>obsession with ones career and over-the-top manufactured enthusiasm for very mundane projects.
That's most corporate places, especially in sales. One of the funniest takes is Step Brothers, "it's the Catalina wine mixer!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ9HcYuGVgU
I got into it for the passion, but I don't have it as much as I did. I can't imagine doing something else like marketing or accounting though.
>obsession with ones career and over-the-top manufactured enthusiasm for very mundane projects.
That's most corporate places, especially in sales. One of the funniest takes is Step Brothers, "it's the Catalina wine mixer!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ9HcYuGVgU
Yeah I got into it for the passion and stayed for the money.
I really loved tech. For about a decade I truly loved every day of work. Then I got really worn out and it took me almost 5 years to work through it. Part of this low point was a point of terrible health (mostly caused by my job and stress). When I came back out of it, I considered leaving the field, but stayed in it for the money.
I was in a management position at this point. I could go into a different field and start over, but I'd probably end up working my way up to management eventually too and its really all the same at that point. You are managing people and processes. So I might as well do that with the tech spin on it.
The obsession with over-manufactured enthusiasm is one I really laugh at now that I look back on my career. I realized that most of us in tech will work on boring stuff. I can't even tell what I am working on anymore, to the point that it is almost comical. I could be building self-driving cars or cloud billing portals. At the end of the day, you are fixing bugs or improving performance or polishing my tiny grain of sand in the huge sculpture that these platforms have become. When you are working on large-scale complex platforms nobody really understands how it all works. There is no magic, even when working on "sexy" projects. I've worked on exciting projects and boring projects and the day-to-day experience is exactly the same.
Pro Tip: "Boring" projects tend to pay better, and since its the same work and same day-to-day experience, take the boring projects. You also tend to find fewer sensationalized colleagues on those projects.
I really loved tech. For about a decade I truly loved every day of work. Then I got really worn out and it took me almost 5 years to work through it. Part of this low point was a point of terrible health (mostly caused by my job and stress). When I came back out of it, I considered leaving the field, but stayed in it for the money.
I was in a management position at this point. I could go into a different field and start over, but I'd probably end up working my way up to management eventually too and its really all the same at that point. You are managing people and processes. So I might as well do that with the tech spin on it.
The obsession with over-manufactured enthusiasm is one I really laugh at now that I look back on my career. I realized that most of us in tech will work on boring stuff. I can't even tell what I am working on anymore, to the point that it is almost comical. I could be building self-driving cars or cloud billing portals. At the end of the day, you are fixing bugs or improving performance or polishing my tiny grain of sand in the huge sculpture that these platforms have become. When you are working on large-scale complex platforms nobody really understands how it all works. There is no magic, even when working on "sexy" projects. I've worked on exciting projects and boring projects and the day-to-day experience is exactly the same.
Pro Tip: "Boring" projects tend to pay better, and since its the same work and same day-to-day experience, take the boring projects. You also tend to find fewer sensationalized colleagues on those projects.
You are probably right but man, isn't this so very disillusioning?
I am a bit in such a hole you mentioned and thinking about how to get out of it best - one of my ideas/hopes was to find more "sexy" projects at some point. Oh well.
> You are probably right but man, isn't this so very disillusioning?
Look at it this way:
Your boring, cushy tech job only exists because the industry as a whole is grossly inefficient.
That's why so many people are doing nearly the same thing, over and over and over, day after day.
If it wasn't for that inefficiency you would need to find other work, and it would probably be a lot more difficult than your current job.
So, glass half full.
Look at it this way:
Your boring, cushy tech job only exists because the industry as a whole is grossly inefficient.
That's why so many people are doing nearly the same thing, over and over and over, day after day.
If it wasn't for that inefficiency you would need to find other work, and it would probably be a lot more difficult than your current job.
So, glass half full.
The flip (up)side of a boring job is that you don't get crises that you must deal with but have to do so at great cost or just impossible. Leave the sexy for stuff that you're allowed to fail in.
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Definitely. I remember showing Google to a colleague at my first internship, when Altavista was the best search engine, and he discarded it automatically as some nerd thing. Oh well.
In my youth, console gamers were considered basement dwelling weirdos by normal people and PC gamers were considered weirdos by console gamers. Such was the hierarchy.
I think World of Warcraft change that somewhat.
I joined one company and was shocked, discover that practically everyone and every department had an account and played at least casually.
I made sure not to mention that I was in a top tier guild getting server firsts. I didn’t want to come off as to weird. I mean I have three computers and seven monitors on my desk, but one have to know when to draw the line.
I made sure not to mention that I was in a top tier guild getting server firsts. I didn’t want to come off as to weird. I mean I have three computers and seven monitors on my desk, but one have to know when to draw the line.
I think WoW also significantly grew the female demographic in terms of gaming, but we saw that with RPGs even prior to WoW too, especially Final Fantasy.
We could go even further back to the late 90's and the official launch of the Internet, where you see the more people believing in this. When Bill Gates was officially the richest man in the world. But, I think with every cycle, you got more believers. Google in 2003-06, along with Facebook. In 2007-09 with the iPhone disrupting the phone industry, that became a big thing. And early 2010's with the rise of the apps - Airbnb, Uber, etc.
I feel we hit a crescendo with the post pandemic bubble and fed pumping money, that's when tech usage globally was of course at it's highest, but also like the sheer number of people using it everyday was massive(maybe 50-75%+ of the world). And it arguably "ate" or saved the world during the pandemic. It's fascinating, and now we're entering another cycle maybe after a brief respite, with LLMs.
I feel we hit a crescendo with the post pandemic bubble and fed pumping money, that's when tech usage globally was of course at it's highest, but also like the sheer number of people using it everyday was massive(maybe 50-75%+ of the world). And it arguably "ate" or saved the world during the pandemic. It's fascinating, and now we're entering another cycle maybe after a brief respite, with LLMs.
The 2008 financial crisis. Before that it was less FAANG, more Goldman and McKinsey.
“Apple probably made tech cool for normies”
It felt like that, but I suspect it’s not really true.
It felt like that, but I suspect it’s not really true.
What do you feel the truth is? It was certainly well-marketed, and felt like there were way more normies with Apple stuff than nerds in the UK.
I can confirm. When I graduated in the early 2010s, one of the professors I was close to mentioned that the cohorts where turning away from the typical hacker types and to the high-achieving money and prestige seekers who did not really care about the field. The last time it had happened was leading into the year 2000 and the EECS department got an entire building out of it as a result. Once the dotcom bubble crashed, enrollment was down to third of its 1999 levels and the building was mostly empty.
History is a flat circle.
My last company was chock-full of Ivy league/Stanford/Berkeley/etc graduates with almost none being the type who actually is interested in technology. About half openly admitted to being a SWE because they couldn't get a product manager role and hoped to pivot into it from SWE after a few years. I will also say that parental pressure had a big part. Why spend 10 years of your life to be a doctor when you can make more money in big tech?
It also became fashionable for people to pivot out of high-finance or management consulting (traditional white-shoe industries) and into corporate development roles at hot companies.
History is a flat circle.
My last company was chock-full of Ivy league/Stanford/Berkeley/etc graduates with almost none being the type who actually is interested in technology. About half openly admitted to being a SWE because they couldn't get a product manager role and hoped to pivot into it from SWE after a few years. I will also say that parental pressure had a big part. Why spend 10 years of your life to be a doctor when you can make more money in big tech?
It also became fashionable for people to pivot out of high-finance or management consulting (traditional white-shoe industries) and into corporate development roles at hot companies.
If I remember correctly, there were 600 CS freshmen in 2000 at Virginia Tech, only ~60 of us were left by graduation, I think largely because of people evaluating their prospects after the crash (and computer science is hard).
That’s some bullshit. I applied for CS at tech and they butchered my admission and put me in general engineering. When I called to correct this obvious mistake they said the CS program was full.
I blamed it on Virginia tech’s football team making it to championships that year (1999). Oh well, still got to work with famous professors and got a very good head start on my career through my Alma mater
I blamed it on Virginia tech’s football team making it to championships that year (1999). Oh well, still got to work with famous professors and got a very good head start on my career through my Alma mater
I was totally surprised how many people I had met in those first classes, who had no programming experience whatsoever and were surprised by the amount of math in the curriculum - they were for sure chasing a trend.
I think my class was the last to graduate from arts/sciences, the CS dept was moved into the engineering college.
I think my class was the last to graduate from arts/sciences, the CS dept was moved into the engineering college.
> About half openly admitted to being a SWE because they couldn't get a product manager role and hoped to pivot into it from SWE after a few years
I'm always kind of curious about these folks. Do they not communicate amongst themselves? It would seem that 50% aspiring to be product managers could not be statistically possible.
I feel like if I walked into a service bay of a dealership and asked the mechanics working on vehicles, there is no way 1/2 of them would try and claim they expect to be service advisor in 2 years.
I'm always kind of curious about these folks. Do they not communicate amongst themselves? It would seem that 50% aspiring to be product managers could not be statistically possible.
I feel like if I walked into a service bay of a dealership and asked the mechanics working on vehicles, there is no way 1/2 of them would try and claim they expect to be service advisor in 2 years.
In finance most people aren't going to end up as an MD (Managing Director, not doctor) but that's probably a goal for most people entering investment banking. I don't think it's unreasonable to have becoming a PM a goal, maybe you'll fail but there's lots of things you can do to swing the odds more in your favor.
If you start as an analyst in Investment Banking at bulge bracket bank (the same hiring pool as for Google APM program and similar), you fall into one of two categories.
1. The coat-rider who sees everyone doing and how can the consensus be wrong. If you read Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis, the first few chapters document his experience at Princeton in the early 80s. It's just the fashionable thing to do.
2. The ones that hope to pivot somewhere in year 2-3 to Private Equity or the Hedge fund space. After a few more years, your hours and stress dramatically improve and you earn life-changing amounts of money (1M+ USD) on a yearly basis if you are good. Very few make it this far though. Many burn out and end up in other corporate finance roles.
Group 1 moved to tech and will slowly move back to high-finance.
1. The coat-rider who sees everyone doing and how can the consensus be wrong. If you read Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis, the first few chapters document his experience at Princeton in the early 80s. It's just the fashionable thing to do.
2. The ones that hope to pivot somewhere in year 2-3 to Private Equity or the Hedge fund space. After a few more years, your hours and stress dramatically improve and you earn life-changing amounts of money (1M+ USD) on a yearly basis if you are good. Very few make it this far though. Many burn out and end up in other corporate finance roles.
Group 1 moved to tech and will slowly move back to high-finance.
I think it's partly that, but I think it's also partly that tech is just becoming just another job. Sure, there is 20% of tech workers doing something new and innovating. There is also 80% that just needs to the role filled and could be done by someone decent enough to make CRUD react apps.
I think it's moving more towards how engineering (mechanical, ee, etc, not software) is seen. It's a skilled and respected job that pays decent, but at the end of the day it's just another job. There will always be mechanical engineers and software engineers who LOVE it and tinker all through the night after work, but that's becoming less and less then norm for software.
My old roommate was a mech engineer who designed lighting fixtures, didn't love his job, but it paid decent enough, and the company needed an ME to design them. There are plenty of "lighting fixtures" that need to be built in the software world.
I think it's moving more towards how engineering (mechanical, ee, etc, not software) is seen. It's a skilled and respected job that pays decent, but at the end of the day it's just another job. There will always be mechanical engineers and software engineers who LOVE it and tinker all through the night after work, but that's becoming less and less then norm for software.
My old roommate was a mech engineer who designed lighting fixtures, didn't love his job, but it paid decent enough, and the company needed an ME to design them. There are plenty of "lighting fixtures" that need to be built in the software world.
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> Sure, there is 20% of tech workers doing something new and innovating
Try closer to 1%. The vast majority of us are just making software to make businesses chug along
Try closer to 1%. The vast majority of us are just making software to make businesses chug along
People were saying this back in the dotcom crash days around 2001, and before that in the collapse of the 6501-based home computer market, to name just two.
I don't think much has changed in the attractiveness--it has been a high-paying field for fifty-years now. The sexiness comes and goes with the cycle.
And tech is cyclical on about 10-15 year cycles or so, and we have hit a downturn after a long upturn. Maybe AI will be the next uptick. Or maybe VR. Hard to predict. But I'm pretty sure it will happen.
I don't think much has changed in the attractiveness--it has been a high-paying field for fifty-years now. The sexiness comes and goes with the cycle.
And tech is cyclical on about 10-15 year cycles or so, and we have hit a downturn after a long upturn. Maybe AI will be the next uptick. Or maybe VR. Hard to predict. But I'm pretty sure it will happen.
> I think one of the chief challenges over the last 5 years is that “tech” became a fashionable, prestige job
This is especially interesting given that Americans used to mock nerds in pop culture and in schools.
A trajectory question that always puzzles me is how fast can we really supply software engineers. Is software engineering like other ordinary white-collar jobs where supply is as elastic as it can be, or software engineering is like math that requires a peculiar personality and certain talent? I draw this question from personal observation, so it's definitely not scientific: China has been big on math education. Math whiz kids are honed like superheroes in China. Teachers and parents put great pressure on students to excel at maths. Yet in the end, only a small percentage of students can truly learn high-school math or entry-level college math. If software engineering is like math, then the supply will stay tight until the demand drops, and techies will continue enjoying good pay after the recession.
This is especially interesting given that Americans used to mock nerds in pop culture and in schools.
A trajectory question that always puzzles me is how fast can we really supply software engineers. Is software engineering like other ordinary white-collar jobs where supply is as elastic as it can be, or software engineering is like math that requires a peculiar personality and certain talent? I draw this question from personal observation, so it's definitely not scientific: China has been big on math education. Math whiz kids are honed like superheroes in China. Teachers and parents put great pressure on students to excel at maths. Yet in the end, only a small percentage of students can truly learn high-school math or entry-level college math. If software engineering is like math, then the supply will stay tight until the demand drops, and techies will continue enjoying good pay after the recession.
I think 90%+ of people without a CS degree and a boot camp can easily outperform any genius dev just by caring, being focused and professional. I'm not kidding. I've seen it many times.
But this is also a byproduct of many tech companies valuing plumbing over good engineering and accepting or ignoring the cost.
But yes, I've met so many boot campers easily outperform their ivy college senior because the second one didn't care, barely worked and completed his daily tasks in one hour.
But in the end the first one churned more code, learned more about the business and people and was miles ahead in efficiency.
But this is also a byproduct of many tech companies valuing plumbing over good engineering and accepting or ignoring the cost.
But yes, I've met so many boot campers easily outperform their ivy college senior because the second one didn't care, barely worked and completed his daily tasks in one hour.
But in the end the first one churned more code, learned more about the business and people and was miles ahead in efficiency.
> I think 90%+ of people without a CS degree and a boot camp can easily outperform any genius dev just by caring, being focused and professional. I'm not kidding. I've seen it many times.
I don't think I've ever seen it. Maybe it's a location/caliber thing, where in some "best cost locales" there's a big brain drain to the valley. We just flat out stopped interviewing bootcamp grads at some point because the signal to noise ratio just became too low.
At one point, the most notorious bootcamp, Lambda (or Bloom Tech, they had to change names a few times to avoid litigation), was desperate enough they would "loan" you a new "grad" for free to try to get you to hire one [0]. And this was pre-pandemic when hiring was at it's peak.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138610
I don't think I've ever seen it. Maybe it's a location/caliber thing, where in some "best cost locales" there's a big brain drain to the valley. We just flat out stopped interviewing bootcamp grads at some point because the signal to noise ratio just became too low.
At one point, the most notorious bootcamp, Lambda (or Bloom Tech, they had to change names a few times to avoid litigation), was desperate enough they would "loan" you a new "grad" for free to try to get you to hire one [0]. And this was pre-pandemic when hiring was at it's peak.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138610
My main point was that the overwhelming majority of tech job is pretty simple repetitive mostly web-dev stuff where companies and their engineering organizations don't care that much about quality.
In such an environments education doesn't really make much of a difference when you're gluing APIs together. The biggest difference between workers productivity really becomes just straight up dependent on focus and professionalism.
People that are too skilled and educated for the job often go lazy mode and do their tasks quickly and then mind their own business and their motivation goes to hell. It is very simple for bootcampers to be more productive just by being focused and professional. In the long run bootcampers also tend to learn more about the business and have a higher impact.
Point is, in most jobs your skills are in the long run secondary to your willingness to learn and do stuff. The fact that people have done tons of algo exercises or system design is quite irrelevant when your job is writing forms, lists or connecting services to databases. It's no rocket science.
In such an environments education doesn't really make much of a difference when you're gluing APIs together. The biggest difference between workers productivity really becomes just straight up dependent on focus and professionalism.
People that are too skilled and educated for the job often go lazy mode and do their tasks quickly and then mind their own business and their motivation goes to hell. It is very simple for bootcampers to be more productive just by being focused and professional. In the long run bootcampers also tend to learn more about the business and have a higher impact.
Point is, in most jobs your skills are in the long run secondary to your willingness to learn and do stuff. The fact that people have done tons of algo exercises or system design is quite irrelevant when your job is writing forms, lists or connecting services to databases. It's no rocket science.
In my experience, it's been tough to find bootcampers who can actually code.
> secondary to your willingness to learn and do stuff. The fact that people have done tons of algo exercises or system design is quite irrelevant when your job is writing forms, lists or connecting services to databases. It's no rocket science.
Isn't that a good demonstration that someone can learn (mastering algorithms and data structures) more than rote-learning a framework?
> secondary to your willingness to learn and do stuff. The fact that people have done tons of algo exercises or system design is quite irrelevant when your job is writing forms, lists or connecting services to databases. It's no rocket science.
Isn't that a good demonstration that someone can learn (mastering algorithms and data structures) more than rote-learning a framework?
Ok since it's anecdotal I will be more specific.
My previous company was involved in 3 to 6 months bootcamps and had the option to be the first to make offers to the best students. This put us in an advantageous position.
2 of the 5 we hired I think were already leaning to write software before starting the bootcamp (as in genuinely being interested in the field and having programmed some hobbyist stuff), 3 did not have such an experience.
All but one turned to be great additions, that one kept struggling but we knew he was weak since the beginning. The two hobbyists both turned great. But by far the best was a girl with no previous experience.
I was able to help her grow and push her to be curious all time to understand the whys. This combined with her huge drive, focus, and professionalism turned her in 18 months since starting to be one of the best devs in the entire org made of 100 devs. She just churned code (quality one), reviews and solved problems one after the other all day. I have been trying to convince her to join my current company 24/7 for a long time.
On the other hand many better programmers just didn't care. They spent days playing console or pc games, and just did subpar work enough to close their daily tasks asap. Hard to fire these people under Italian law, but they represented the overwhelming majority of devs.
Now, I understand this is anecdotak, the pool of talent was like a pyramid in the bootcamp, and the weakest or average ones weren't great, but the top and most motivated where better coworkers and juniors than most engineers I've met.
Hope this gives my opinion a context.
My previous company was involved in 3 to 6 months bootcamps and had the option to be the first to make offers to the best students. This put us in an advantageous position.
2 of the 5 we hired I think were already leaning to write software before starting the bootcamp (as in genuinely being interested in the field and having programmed some hobbyist stuff), 3 did not have such an experience.
All but one turned to be great additions, that one kept struggling but we knew he was weak since the beginning. The two hobbyists both turned great. But by far the best was a girl with no previous experience.
I was able to help her grow and push her to be curious all time to understand the whys. This combined with her huge drive, focus, and professionalism turned her in 18 months since starting to be one of the best devs in the entire org made of 100 devs. She just churned code (quality one), reviews and solved problems one after the other all day. I have been trying to convince her to join my current company 24/7 for a long time.
On the other hand many better programmers just didn't care. They spent days playing console or pc games, and just did subpar work enough to close their daily tasks asap. Hard to fire these people under Italian law, but they represented the overwhelming majority of devs.
Now, I understand this is anecdotak, the pool of talent was like a pyramid in the bootcamp, and the weakest or average ones weren't great, but the top and most motivated where better coworkers and juniors than most engineers I've met.
Hope this gives my opinion a context.
Out of a class of... 40 you got 4 good hires. Meaning the rest of the class was probably unemployable (and 10% would be pretty good for a bootcamp).
> On the other hand many better programmers just didn't care. They spent days playing console or pc games, and just did subpar work enough to close their daily tasks asap. Hard to fire these people under Italian law, but they represented the overwhelming majority of devs.
What's interesting here to consider is Italy's market for engineers.
I've met a lot of talented Italian engineers here in the valley, so the local market might already have suffered significant brain drain.
> On the other hand many better programmers just didn't care. They spent days playing console or pc games, and just did subpar work enough to close their daily tasks asap. Hard to fire these people under Italian law, but they represented the overwhelming majority of devs.
What's interesting here to consider is Italy's market for engineers.
I've met a lot of talented Italian engineers here in the valley, so the local market might already have suffered significant brain drain.
I think software engineering is like math that requires a peculiar personality and certain talent. However, there's actually a massive pool of these candidates who allocate themselves between different industries as demand ebbs and flows.
They end up in medicine, consulting, engineering, manufacturing, academic research, Wall Street, etc and often switch whole industries mid-career too.
They end up in medicine, consulting, engineering, manufacturing, academic research, Wall Street, etc and often switch whole industries mid-career too.
previously the only socially acceptable legitimate career paths for new grads from top colleges were finance, consulting, medical+law+business school, PhD (for nerds), and maybe working for Congress or a policy think tank. anything else and other people's parents would pity your parents at graduation.
probably about 10 years ago big tech got added to this list. not sure exactly why. maybe they just got big enough to start doing serious campus recruiting.
probably about 10 years ago big tech got added to this list. not sure exactly why. maybe they just got big enough to start doing serious campus recruiting.
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Back in 1997 when I joined college for computer Science in California, in any class there was maybe 1, occasionally 2 people that were in the class because they loved technology, and wanted to be in due to passion.
Everyone else was in it because computers paid well.
Not to say that people didn’t work hard or eventually become skilled. Just that money was the driving force more than anything.
Everyone else was in it because computers paid well.
Not to say that people didn’t work hard or eventually become skilled. Just that money was the driving force more than anything.
I think the six months bootcamp hires certainly tilted the prestige part into tech being just another mass hiring industry. And mass hiring did happen during the pandemic on a large scale.
Imo, tech is still a great place to be. But we all need to raise the bar for hires.
Imo, tech is still a great place to be. But we all need to raise the bar for hires.
Different people will say it happened at different times.
I noticed it around 25 years ago.
But I understand there have been phases of go-to prestige job that a certain class went through. Techbro didn't immediately displace, say, investment banking bro, or management consulting bro.
I noticed it around 25 years ago.
But I understand there have been phases of go-to prestige job that a certain class went through. Techbro didn't immediately displace, say, investment banking bro, or management consulting bro.
Tech became fashionable with the Netscape IPO. Maybe even as far back as Adam Curries internet chat based MTV things he would do. IMO that was the pivot when I look back - once it was cool enough to be on MTV in weekend marathons, back in say 1994, that was the beginning.
I agree with you to some extent, however, the skillset you can build working for a financial institution motivates young adults beyond prestige. The knowledge you accumulate in these roles (info on investment strategies, financing options and strategic thinking surrounding exit opportunities or inorganic growth pathways) can be applicable in many industries and is useful no matter what you choose to do since money is moving the world. People prefer these careers for more than the high status and tech graduates could benefit from expanding their horizons.
I'm mixed on this, I can definitely appreciate the 10x TC boost but it makes hiring unbearable: I need hackers and now the market's flooded with very academically strong, much smarter than me and easily more talented PMCs.
None of the existing methods e.g. leetcode work well, so now we may resort to paid novel take homes e.g. write a simple device driver from scratch for the Intel E1000 in C99 over the weekend. Something you'd likely have been exposed to in CS102 type stuff.
None of the existing methods e.g. leetcode work well, so now we may resort to paid novel take homes e.g. write a simple device driver from scratch for the Intel E1000 in C99 over the weekend. Something you'd likely have been exposed to in CS102 type stuff.
One of the side-effects of the technology crowd becoming saturated with the straight-laced, standardized-test oriented, topper types is that LeetCode aligns neatly with how you prepare.
Right secondary school grades + near perfect exams -> Right Undergraduate
Right undergraduate + LeetCode (basically an exam) -> Big Tech job " + Case interview prep -> High paying entry level management consulting job " + Right connections -> High paying entry level wall-st job " + High LSAT -> Right Law School -> High-paying BigLaw job " + High MCAT -> Right Med School -> Right Residency -> High Paying Physician Job
If you notice, tech (Googles of the World and elite startups) have now fallen inline with the path for other white-shoe industries.
FWIW, I know at least a few people from memory that had non-technical undergraduates (usually economics) but are excellent at studying for exams. Sure enough, they did enough LeetCode they could get a job at Meta or similar. Ask them what actually happens in a CPU or similar technical question and you get a blank stare.
Right secondary school grades + near perfect exams -> Right Undergraduate
Right undergraduate + LeetCode (basically an exam) -> Big Tech job " + Case interview prep -> High paying entry level management consulting job " + Right connections -> High paying entry level wall-st job " + High LSAT -> Right Law School -> High-paying BigLaw job " + High MCAT -> Right Med School -> Right Residency -> High Paying Physician Job
If you notice, tech (Googles of the World and elite startups) have now fallen inline with the path for other white-shoe industries.
FWIW, I know at least a few people from memory that had non-technical undergraduates (usually economics) but are excellent at studying for exams. Sure enough, they did enough LeetCode they could get a job at Meta or similar. Ask them what actually happens in a CPU or similar technical question and you get a blank stare.
> I need hackers and now the market's flooded with very academically strong, much smarter than me and easily more talented PMCs.
> so now we may resort to paid novel take homes e.g. write a simple device driver from scratch for the Intel E1000 in C99 over the weekend
There are too many good candidates so you're having to... flog them harder?
God, tech hiring is weird. People in other sectors of the economy look at me like I've just announced that I have cancer, when I explain what the tech interview world looks like.
> so now we may resort to paid novel take homes e.g. write a simple device driver from scratch for the Intel E1000 in C99 over the weekend
There are too many good candidates so you're having to... flog them harder?
God, tech hiring is weird. People in other sectors of the economy look at me like I've just announced that I have cancer, when I explain what the tech interview world looks like.
Yup. My wife finds it extremely odd that my interviews go more rounds and more hours for a job to write a simple CRUD app than for her interviewing for an ICU job as an RN.
Oh well you see writing a CRUD app is so much more important and serious and difficult than saving human lives. And bad programmer hires are uniquely damaging in a way that bad hires aren't in any industry with normal interview processes (which is nearly all of them) and there's just no way to mitigate those effects until they're nearly gone by applying common-sense best-practices to your processes, that you ought to be doing anyway. Nope, only solution's to put every candidate through the wringer, at enormous time & monetary expense to all concerned!
Programmers catch a lot of shit for being immature or unprofessional, but I think tech management deserves a harder look, when it comes to those things.
Programmers catch a lot of shit for being immature or unprofessional, but I think tech management deserves a harder look, when it comes to those things.
Medicine and adjacent has pretty well-defined schooling pathways, afaik a nurse cannot claim to have picked up their skills 'extracurricularly' in the same manner that a future 10x SWE can - as a result we have a diverse pool that contains both CS grads from top schools who may be unsuitable, (plenty of incredible ones too, of course), alongside random 'uneducated' hackers who may be a good fit.
Thus, in lieu of a standardized framework we have to invent our own.
I very much agree though, the avg. CRUD shop could probably just ask Fizzbuzz and have the same outcome as these gauntlets.
Thus, in lieu of a standardized framework we have to invent our own.
I very much agree though, the avg. CRUD shop could probably just ask Fizzbuzz and have the same outcome as these gauntlets.
> Thus, in lieu of a standardized framework we have to invent our own.
The FAANGs and similar could easily have created such a thing, and driven wide adoption of it. They find some other value in their very-expensive process, or they'd have gotten rid of it with the snap of their fingers, if that were the only reason.
I suspect it's mainly to do with reducing turnover and, therefore, suppressing wages among their workers. Yes, despite those wages already being quite high. Wouldn't be the first time they've done it. "Solving" the problem would be trivial and relatively cheap, compared to the current processes, but it'd come at the cost of making it easier for employees to jump ship for more $$$, and none of them want that.
Why do the rest do it? Cargo-culting, mostly.
The FAANGs and similar could easily have created such a thing, and driven wide adoption of it. They find some other value in their very-expensive process, or they'd have gotten rid of it with the snap of their fingers, if that were the only reason.
I suspect it's mainly to do with reducing turnover and, therefore, suppressing wages among their workers. Yes, despite those wages already being quite high. Wouldn't be the first time they've done it. "Solving" the problem would be trivial and relatively cheap, compared to the current processes, but it'd come at the cost of making it easier for employees to jump ship for more $$$, and none of them want that.
Why do the rest do it? Cargo-culting, mostly.
Also the typical hazing dynamics common to all cults.
For sure, its a management problem. I feel pretty confident, as just another engineer, I could sit down and shoot the wind about programming with someone for 30-45 minutes and know if they are worth their salt. No crazy assessments, no multiple rounds, just a conversation about the software industry and the process and tech.
That is not an effective or realistic approach to hiring. Introductory CS courses seldom cover low-level device drivers. And you don't really need a particular type of "hacker" (whatever that means). Just hire someone with the right aptitude and send them to a technical training course.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1142662.1142667
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1142662.1142667
> write a simple device driver from scratch ... exposed to in CS102
Where the hell did you go to school? When I did CS102, they were talking about linked lists and recursion. I would love to have seen device drivers, but when I was in school, everything was way more academic and impractical than that.
Where the hell did you go to school? When I did CS102, they were talking about linked lists and recursion. I would love to have seen device drivers, but when I was in school, everything was way more academic and impractical than that.
Mine was even more basic. There were students struggling to understand what a variable is.
> so now we may resort to paid novel take homes e.g. write a simple device driver from scratch for the Intel E1000 in C99 over the weekend. Something you'd likely have been exposed to in CS102 type stuff.
I am really curious to know what school has a cs 102 level class that teaches you writing a device driver?
I could perhaps see this as part of Operating systems class, where you just learned about how kernels works using a minimal OS (like xv6).
but that example you gave based on the expectation you mentioned are very extreme. This is why its hard to find talnet to hire.
I am really curious to know what school has a cs 102 level class that teaches you writing a device driver?
I could perhaps see this as part of Operating systems class, where you just learned about how kernels works using a minimal OS (like xv6).
but that example you gave based on the expectation you mentioned are very extreme. This is why its hard to find talnet to hire.
There's nothing fashionable or prestigious about debugging and patching a security hole at 1am on a Friday in my underwear.
It is if you’re getting paid $300 000 a year to do that.
Nah, the money only goes so far. I've been doing SWE professionally since '07, and that wasn't in the US, so there was far, far, far less comp involved. The trend I see with new grads is that they're driven and drawn to the space for whatever reason (money, etc), but most abandon programming proper rapidly - I'd hazard within 3 years - and go on to other tertiary fields (PM, DevOps, SRE, etc) or just go back to complete a professional degree (law, MBA, etc) or PhD.
16 years isn't a whole lot of time in the field, but it's enough to have watched the expectations of SWE roles expand, and the demands of dumping ops ontop of an already complex job do take their tole. My original comment was tongue in cheek, but late night fixes, pages, opsing, ontop of day to day development is a recipe for burnout when you add partners and kids into the mix.
16 years isn't a whole lot of time in the field, but it's enough to have watched the expectations of SWE roles expand, and the demands of dumping ops ontop of an already complex job do take their tole. My original comment was tongue in cheek, but late night fixes, pages, opsing, ontop of day to day development is a recipe for burnout when you add partners and kids into the mix.
> most abandon programming proper rapidly - I'd hazard within 3 years - and
> go on to other tertiary fields (PM, DevOps, SRE, etc)
If someone becomes an SRE because they don't like programming, they're going to be in for a big surprise when they discover how much quality time they're about to share with the unshare(2) manpage.
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The swing towards tech as a default prestige career over finance and banking started after the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent aftermath. The iPhone was released in 2009, Facebook had already been growing for 6 years, and google was already big and the cool place to work.
It started in the mid 1990s. The common thought was, why join an investment bank and underwrite some random dude's IPO when I can start my own company and by 28 it'll be MY company going public?
iPhone was released in 2007
I think it's also recalibrating the different types of jobs. The type that tech has accumulated in excess over the last 5 years especially and even longer in the biggest companies are the product and middle managers, Marketing/Strategy/HR/Sales folks.
But scarcity also adds prestige.
Frankly I think its much simpler. Its a high income to effort career.
But even if we do think this is good because it weeds out people worried about prestige, why stop at 200k layoffs. Why not more? You probably don’t really want that.
Frankly I think its much simpler. Its a high income to effort career.
But even if we do think this is good because it weeds out people worried about prestige, why stop at 200k layoffs. Why not more? You probably don’t really want that.
This "trend" started over 25 years ago.
The elites chase the money. It's definitional.
Rapidly emerging profitable technologies create fortunes and the elites chase the fortunes. There's no conceptual difference between the iPhone and the steam engine or steel mill in this regard.
Rapidly emerging profitable technologies create fortunes and the elites chase the fortunes. There's no conceptual difference between the iPhone and the steam engine or steel mill in this regard.
Why do we keep providing such unskilled grifters so much influence over human agency?
Such classist BS exploits manual labor.
We’re just perpetuating empowering the lazy. It makes the screeching about social programs seem hilarious since being a bank CEO is not biology sustaining work. It’s historical barnacle. History we hallucinate since we were never there. We’re more like LLMs than we want to admit
Such classist BS exploits manual labor.
We’re just perpetuating empowering the lazy. It makes the screeching about social programs seem hilarious since being a bank CEO is not biology sustaining work. It’s historical barnacle. History we hallucinate since we were never there. We’re more like LLMs than we want to admit
Elites? I think our definitions vary widely here.
In the context of career choice, I mean the children of wealthy and powerful families and/or those graduating from our most prestigious preparatory institutions.
Is there some other definition?
Is there some other definition?
You think this is only about powerful families’ kids? I think the article is clickbait personally, but that wasn’t my take at all.
But the person being interviewed isn't actually "in tech". She graduated with a degree in strategic communication. She just limited her search initially to tech companies which is odd. Clickbait article makes it sound like actual tech graduates are going to Wall Street which I'd be more interested in knowing about.
It seems like most news outlets treat "tech workers" as anyone who works at a "tech" company. I wonder if they would call her a "construction worker" if she worked in the same capacity for a construction company.
I think there is an apprehension to use descriptive titles for whatever lame reason (I think it was to avoid status signals originally). What's wrong with administrator, clerk, etc?
I think tech workers are people who work at tech companies. Including non technical roles.
Do you think construction workers are people who work at construction companies in the same way?
Technically yes. Just like healthcare workers are people who work in healthcare and arent necessarily doctors or nurses but could be, for example, administrative or academic.
They do this with actual products as well. Companies like Ycombinator for some time were often thought of as "tech companies" and not investment banks.
No but you can say they work in the construction industry, like how the health care industry is more than just nurses, doctors, and surgeons.
I think it's fair to say that product owners and UI designers are tech workers too, but maybe the issue is that "tech industry/worker" is way too broad of a term. Especially when a lot of these roles are extremely new to humanity (engineering and doctor/healer have been around for thousands of years whereas a marketer is barely over a 100 years old).
I think it's fair to say that product owners and UI designers are tech workers too, but maybe the issue is that "tech industry/worker" is way too broad of a term. Especially when a lot of these roles are extremely new to humanity (engineering and doctor/healer have been around for thousands of years whereas a marketer is barely over a 100 years old).
> whereas a marketer is barely over a 100 years old
This suggests you may be off by a few millenia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_marketing
I lean towards the "people have been people since there were people" side of the debate and assume there has been marketing since at least the invention of agriculture and its resultant ability to allow humans to make a living doing something other than calorie acquisition.
This suggests you may be off by a few millenia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_marketing
I lean towards the "people have been people since there were people" side of the debate and assume there has been marketing since at least the invention of agriculture and its resultant ability to allow humans to make a living doing something other than calorie acquisition.
Interesting, I wonder if it would be pedantic in construing modern marketing being drastically different than marketing pre 1800s? It doesn't seem fair to to me to classify a shopkeep from antiquity shouting they have the best wine in a bazaar to be equivalent to a marketing job in Meta.
But the examples in your wiki page show just that, really neat stuff. Thanks for sharing.
But the examples in your wiki page show just that, really neat stuff. Thanks for sharing.
If you make marketing pre-1800s, with people branding their widely distributed amphorae, making ads and so on as drastically different than modern techniques, you'd have to also consider engineering drastically different. Also, the idea of surviving a visit to the doctor is a pretty novel modern concept.
I agree with the general point but I suspect marketing has been around in some form for longer. Branding at least certainly has been.
Modern consumer product branding with respect to e.g. food mostly dates to when self-service supermarkets put in an appearance. So mostly 20th Century. Although certainly there were sales adjacent and promotional activities long before that that are pretty much marketing, at least if you squint a bit.
I posted a comment a while back about this same phenomenon, which I can't for the life of me find now, but it was quoting some data from media posts about job cuts in the tech industry. The overarching theme was that the "tech worker layoffs" almost never featured actual, STEM degree educated, feature making, bug fixing, engineering focused, individual contributors. The layoffs impacted Sales, Marketing, Product, HR, and Manager roles. Despite this, media outlets continued to make it out as if engineers and scientists were the ones being primarily impacted. They were doing it by hiding the actual jobs roles of those being interviewed deep into the article, in a short one-liner. There was never good data to suggest who those being most effected really were.
I don't understand the reasoning behind it beyond blatant ignorance, or perhaps that they have a dislike for silicon valley types and get satisfaction out of demeaning the job role in some way by making engineers out to be as "easily dispensable" as everyone else. It's bizarre. I guess, whatever generates the most clicks.
I don't understand the reasoning behind it beyond blatant ignorance, or perhaps that they have a dislike for silicon valley types and get satisfaction out of demeaning the job role in some way by making engineers out to be as "easily dispensable" as everyone else. It's bizarre. I guess, whatever generates the most clicks.
The "hired to do nothing" Tech Company meme was almost entirely actually just recruiters: https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-tech-workers-say-they-wer...
Most of the 2022 and 2023 layoffs were for "Non-Technical" or "Tech-Adjacent staff". [0] [1] [2] [3] [4]
The market is still incredibly strong for SV caliber devs, and I see no signal it's going to slow down. If anything, it kept compensation for engineers from cratering by propping up the stocks.
[0] https://interviewing.io/blog/2022-layoffs-engineers-vs-other...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-24/tech-layo...
[2] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3690309/about-those-te...
[3] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-03-0...
[4] https://techreport.com/news/3493451/microsoft-layoffs-ethics...
The market is still incredibly strong for SV caliber devs, and I see no signal it's going to slow down. If anything, it kept compensation for engineers from cratering by propping up the stocks.
[0] https://interviewing.io/blog/2022-layoffs-engineers-vs-other...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-24/tech-layo...
[2] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3690309/about-those-te...
[3] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-03-0...
[4] https://techreport.com/news/3493451/microsoft-layoffs-ethics...
> The market is still incredibly strong for SV caliber devs
Perhaps if you're comparing it to other industries, but compared to tech's own (recent) past, it's most definitely not "incredibly strong".
Not trying to be snarky, but have you actively searched for a role recently, say in the last 2 months or so? Recruiters reach out far less frequently now on LinkedIn, the common theme even among many experienced engineers these days is instant rejections, or if not that, then being rejected after goin through the final round. Very few are able to land well paying, interesting roles within weeks (or a month at most) of starting their search like they were able to even as recently as a year ago.
It's still possible to find work, but you'll quite likely have to accept a lateral move (at best) or accept a pay cut these days if you've been laid off.
Perhaps if you're comparing it to other industries, but compared to tech's own (recent) past, it's most definitely not "incredibly strong".
Not trying to be snarky, but have you actively searched for a role recently, say in the last 2 months or so? Recruiters reach out far less frequently now on LinkedIn, the common theme even among many experienced engineers these days is instant rejections, or if not that, then being rejected after goin through the final round. Very few are able to land well paying, interesting roles within weeks (or a month at most) of starting their search like they were able to even as recently as a year ago.
It's still possible to find work, but you'll quite likely have to accept a lateral move (at best) or accept a pay cut these days if you've been laid off.
Jobs fill with applicants within 30 minutes. Recruiters have 100+ applicants to chose from. Roles are not interesting. I wish you luck if you are searching..
> Jobs fill with applicants within 30 minutes. Recruiters have 100+ applicants to chose from.
That's not different than pre-layoffs.
The overwhelming majority of applicants are not qualified, or are "tech adjacent" applying for SWE to try to get "a foot in the door" (I kid you not, it happens).
That's not different than pre-layoffs.
The overwhelming majority of applicants are not qualified, or are "tech adjacent" applying for SWE to try to get "a foot in the door" (I kid you not, it happens).
The overwhelming majority of anecdotal evidence by software engineer job seekers is that the market is rough. Much worse than before the layoffs.
It came around.
> The latest round of layoffs at Facebook parent company Meta is impacting workers in core technical roles like data scientists and software engineers — positions once thought to be beyond reproach.
https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/21/23692515/tech-worke...
> The latest round of layoffs at Facebook parent company Meta is impacting workers in core technical roles like data scientists and software engineers — positions once thought to be beyond reproach.
https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/21/23692515/tech-worke...
> Meanwhile, the economy is not as strong as it was, and Wall Street is telling tech companies that less is more. The rise of AI at work is also a contributing factor, since it allows coders to be more productive, or potentially allows employers to do the same work as before but with fewer workers.
Zero of these people have been let go because of ai yet vox is peddling this myth. How long until vox takes vice’s path?
Zero of these people have been let go because of ai yet vox is peddling this myth. How long until vox takes vice’s path?
Meta is different.
They are pivoting hard from VR to AI.
They are pivoting hard from VR to AI.
Are they going to rename the company to "Brain" now?
Can't say for other companies but they came for engineers as well at Google.
> I don't understand the reasoning behind it beyond blatant ignorance
Because class warfare and hate drive clicks and reads. Now who else to hate if not those members of society that earned what should be normal pay? Isnt that more entertaining than hating on those who earn billions, pay little tax, drive inflation up and make us poorer by the day?
You know, the good old pity worker against worker.
Because class warfare and hate drive clicks and reads. Now who else to hate if not those members of society that earned what should be normal pay? Isnt that more entertaining than hating on those who earn billions, pay little tax, drive inflation up and make us poorer by the day?
You know, the good old pity worker against worker.
They do mention someone else who was a CS major but, yes, not clear how much of this is developers etc. and how much is all the other people who work at a tech or a finance company.
Exactly. Tech unemployment is still extremely low, practically nonexistent. All the tech professionals I know with hard skills that have sought jobs in the last 6 months find them most of the time in less than a month. It's not a struggle for anyone except recruiters and maybe the tech-managerial class that lacks hard skills or a long track record. Gone probably are the days of 400k TC PM's with a degree in communications.
> All the tech professionals I know with hard skills that have sought jobs in the last 6 months find them most of the time in less than a month.
I'm curious how representative that sample is.
A few months ago the AI startup I worked at pivoted and laid off 15%. AFAIK the majority of us, all very technical, are still looking for work.
Note: My situation may be a little niche. I live in the middle-of-nowhere, USA, so I'm trying to restrict my search to remote jobs. That rules out most of finance, and many Alphabet-related jobs. I really, really hope I don't need to move my family to find decent work.
I'm curious how representative that sample is.
A few months ago the AI startup I worked at pivoted and laid off 15%. AFAIK the majority of us, all very technical, are still looking for work.
Note: My situation may be a little niche. I live in the middle-of-nowhere, USA, so I'm trying to restrict my search to remote jobs. That rules out most of finance, and many Alphabet-related jobs. I really, really hope I don't need to move my family to find decent work.
Salary is an important factor too. In the last couple years, I’ve jumped from two startups to big tech, making 130k, 170k, and now over 300k. I think getting a job again at the former two salary points would be easy but not my current one as much if I were let go.
PMs make less than Devs at the same level in the company.
> Gone probably are the days of 400k TC PM's with a degree in communications.
As a PM, these days never existed. All of the high TC PMs are technical PMs, like myself, who have an engineering background. I was in Eng for more than a decade before I became a PM. MBAs turned PMs never commanded as high of compensation as technical PMs as ICs at any tech company. Technical PMs are in the same salary bands as Eng, non-technical PMs are generally 1 level or half step below in the bands.
There's way too many people that get their impression about what PMs do from "Day in the Life" TikTok videos made by non-technical associate PMs who are a couple years out of college and basically doing the easiest pieces of things.
As a PM, these days never existed. All of the high TC PMs are technical PMs, like myself, who have an engineering background. I was in Eng for more than a decade before I became a PM. MBAs turned PMs never commanded as high of compensation as technical PMs as ICs at any tech company. Technical PMs are in the same salary bands as Eng, non-technical PMs are generally 1 level or half step below in the bands.
There's way too many people that get their impression about what PMs do from "Day in the Life" TikTok videos made by non-technical associate PMs who are a couple years out of college and basically doing the easiest pieces of things.
When I worked for a computer systems company, pretty much all the PMs had technical degrees of one sort or another, many had worked as engineers, and a fair number had MBAs as well.
But generally, salaries at tech companies weren't as high then. My salary in the late 80s as a PM with engineering work experience and a couple of masters degrees was the equivalent of about $120K today in a major tech hub.
But generally, salaries at tech companies weren't as high then. My salary in the late 80s as a PM with engineering work experience and a couple of masters degrees was the equivalent of about $120K today in a major tech hub.
> When I worked for a computer systems company, pretty much all the PMs had technical degrees of one sort or another, many had worked as engineers, and a fair number had MBAs as well.
This is pretty much the same now. I am on a ~40 person Product team and only a small number of people do not have a technical background. The vast majority of IC PMs at higher seniority have a technical background. Most MBAs you meet in tech companies are people who were technical and went back to school, although there are a few PMs that are more focused on business analysis and marketing side (sometimes categorized as PMMs or Outbound PMs in some companies) and these folks tend to be less technical, but also doing less technical work, so that's perfectly okay.
This is pretty much the same now. I am on a ~40 person Product team and only a small number of people do not have a technical background. The vast majority of IC PMs at higher seniority have a technical background. Most MBAs you meet in tech companies are people who were technical and went back to school, although there are a few PMs that are more focused on business analysis and marketing side (sometimes categorized as PMMs or Outbound PMs in some companies) and these folks tend to be less technical, but also doing less technical work, so that's perfectly okay.
> Clickbait article makes it sound like actual tech graduates are going to Wall Street
Is this not still the case? Investment banks and hedge funds were full of EE majors back when I was there, and most banks have significant software operations.
Is this not still the case? Investment banks and hedge funds were full of EE majors back when I was there, and most banks have significant software operations.
There isnt really a “tech graduate“ though. Computer Science is as close as you’ll get but there are lots of non technical people in tech.
Queue 1/2 years and big tech starts whining about a skills shortage again.
Nah, they'll only want 15 years of Rust experience.
and one must be under 25 years old - no gray beards!
Just shave the beard for the interview. I've seen that a lot.
30 years of Google's Carbon you mean? Only because Rust is now 15 years old or close? Carbon is like 1 or 2 years old.
Absolutely. It's such a load of bullshit.
My wife (former investment banker who pivoted to risk management) was half-joking when she said that high-finance is always the apex predator, even if at times it doesn't look like it. It sits at the center of all major institutions.
When I graduated from Columbia in 1999, I interviewed and got offers at various tech startups, but entry-level jobs on the "PM track" for those without a CS/engineering degree didn't formally exist at the likes of Microsoft or Yahoo as far as I know. I had a technical background, but was almost entirely self-taught, and had no interest in writing code for money anyway. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36027171>
Of my offers I chose an investment banking job where I worked with tech companies. Thank goodness for that; I got to participate in the dotcom bubble without being directly swept up in its popping, and saw the Valley immediately post-bubble collapse. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34726735>
Of my offers I chose an investment banking job where I worked with tech companies. Thank goodness for that; I got to participate in the dotcom bubble without being directly swept up in its popping, and saw the Valley immediately post-bubble collapse. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34726735>
Most of the APM programs require a quantitative if not technical background but that isn't the real selection criteria. The selection criteria are "go getters". The people who graduate at the top of their class while preparing for the next Olympics and running their seed-stage startup on the side. Top MBA programs select for the same criteria but in a business context.
Similar vibe to the very last line: “Even when things go poorly, banks make it out all right."
Pretty unsurprising.
It's not like it's certain anywhere but, as the article says, the equation has changed both respect to total comp (especially because of stock) and perceived job stability. And I suspect that a lot of people weren't that set on Big Tech aside from the compensation and lifestyle.
It's not like it's certain anywhere but, as the article says, the equation has changed both respect to total comp (especially because of stock) and perceived job stability. And I suspect that a lot of people weren't that set on Big Tech aside from the compensation and lifestyle.
I think the last point is really important... how many people really want to work at a tech company? There are many other jobs that frankly provide significantly more meaning and personal gratification to the person doing them. Doctor? Teacher? Nurse? Public defender? Chef? The list goes on. I hope the tech bubble deflates permanently and allows salaries across professions to normalize so that there is more balance in society.
In general, pay in other branches of engineering even is pretty skewed relative to at least software salaries in Big Tech and adjacent. That was not really true historically and, arguably, it's self-correcting to some degree. If CS/EE had been the obvious high salary opportunity among engineering majors when I was an undergrad, it's not like I was really that wedded to the field I went into--and indeed didn't really work as a mechanical engineer for all that long.
I'm literally only doing this because tinkering on computers in high school got me skills that had me accidentally landing jobs that paid better than anything I actually wanted to do, with comically little effort. Never intended to do it as a living, don't really like it (and like it less every year), but don't want a 50-70% pay cut in middle-age, either.
Similar story here. I got into this because of video games and that accidentally turned into a career in software development. I originally wanted to get my shit together and go to med school (or in the med field at least), but got turned off by the cost, duration, and non-living wage during pre-med/residency.
I'm nearly two decades into the software dev industry now and working in a FAANG. I use "working" loosely as I've completely gone into quiet quitting mode for the last 5 months or so. I hate this job, I hate this company, I hate this industry. I can count on one hand the number of times in my career that I actually enjoyed working on a particular project and those were exclusively lone-wolf risks I took to advance myself (thankfully they paid off).
I'm only doing this to support my family. There is not a single day where I don't dread sitting down in this fucking chair and staring at a screen for 8 hours. Thankfully I'm able to stave off depression with hobbies and other interests.
I'm nearly two decades into the software dev industry now and working in a FAANG. I use "working" loosely as I've completely gone into quiet quitting mode for the last 5 months or so. I hate this job, I hate this company, I hate this industry. I can count on one hand the number of times in my career that I actually enjoyed working on a particular project and those were exclusively lone-wolf risks I took to advance myself (thankfully they paid off).
I'm only doing this to support my family. There is not a single day where I don't dread sitting down in this fucking chair and staring at a screen for 8 hours. Thankfully I'm able to stave off depression with hobbies and other interests.
> I'm only doing this to support my family. There is not a single day where I don't dread sitting down in this fucking chair and staring at a screen for 8 hours. Thankfully I'm able to stave off depression with hobbies and other interests.
I've preferred working tech support. I've preferred low-end service jobs.
But those pay shit, so here I am.
I think I might really enjoy & be good at product management, but breaking in without lucking into a role at an existing employer is tricky. Keeping an eye out for opportunities—I definitely do not want to still be killing Jira tickets and fighting broken tools and bad SDKs when I'm in the last third of my career. Started out ambivalent, and have grown to hate it.
[EDIT]
> There is not a single day where I don't dread sitting down in this fucking chair and staring at a screen for 8 hours.
Oh, yeah, and this resonates, in particular. If not for having a family, I'd be out already. Find something with much lower pay but a quick little well-defined, "person asks for thing, I deliver, they're happy" reward loop, ideally with as little glowing-screen time involved as possible, and go back to having, like, any energy at the end of the day. All that extra money would not be worth staying in this industry, if it were just me (also I'd have a whole lot more saved up for early semi-retirement by now if nobody else needed any of it, LOL)
I've preferred working tech support. I've preferred low-end service jobs.
But those pay shit, so here I am.
I think I might really enjoy & be good at product management, but breaking in without lucking into a role at an existing employer is tricky. Keeping an eye out for opportunities—I definitely do not want to still be killing Jira tickets and fighting broken tools and bad SDKs when I'm in the last third of my career. Started out ambivalent, and have grown to hate it.
[EDIT]
> There is not a single day where I don't dread sitting down in this fucking chair and staring at a screen for 8 hours.
Oh, yeah, and this resonates, in particular. If not for having a family, I'd be out already. Find something with much lower pay but a quick little well-defined, "person asks for thing, I deliver, they're happy" reward loop, ideally with as little glowing-screen time involved as possible, and go back to having, like, any energy at the end of the day. All that extra money would not be worth staying in this industry, if it were just me (also I'd have a whole lot more saved up for early semi-retirement by now if nobody else needed any of it, LOL)
That's really funny, my story is almost exactly the same. I was working an hourly job out of high school and my roommate was a web developer who not only made about 4x what I did (this was 1998), but he also got to wear jeans and death metal shirts to work and play Half Life at lunch. I bought an HTML for Dummies book, built a small portfolio of skateboarding websites and was hired at his company a few months later.
25 years later I'm a still working in software (though not on the web), and my motivation for doing so has changed very little.
25 years later I'm a still working in software (though not on the web), and my motivation for doing so has changed very little.
Haha, mine was within a couple years of your story, even. I wonder if that still happens—kids pick up some light computer skills, accidentally end up with a tech career and find it hard to leave because everything else pays a ton worse and/or requires extensive, expensive re-training—or if that was just a span of a few years we both happened to be the right (or wrong...) ages for.
This is a very oblivious take.
I have friends who are doctors.....their work doesn't feel meaningful. They are constantly pressured to move from patient to patient like they are cattle.
Friend is a pharmacist, she stands 12 hours a day. She he is forced to go in sick. She gets written up for being late.
Many teachers hate their jobs, they are underpaid and have to deal with all kinds of good/shitty kids.
Chef? Seriously do some snooping around subreddits/message boards for these professions. You will quickly realize how corporations can make any "meaningful" job a drag and unhealthy.
Programming can be extremely meaningful. You can create great things that help society. However, many of those projects won't pay for themselves. So, if I company wants to pay me over six figures to write some code, I will gladly take it.
Plus, I am a nerd, I like building stuff, sheds, racing sims, tinkering on bikes, cars and computers. My ability to tinker with computers, write queries and programming can allow other people to do their jobs. Imagine a health system without a computer.
I have friends who are doctors.....their work doesn't feel meaningful. They are constantly pressured to move from patient to patient like they are cattle.
Friend is a pharmacist, she stands 12 hours a day. She he is forced to go in sick. She gets written up for being late.
Many teachers hate their jobs, they are underpaid and have to deal with all kinds of good/shitty kids.
Chef? Seriously do some snooping around subreddits/message boards for these professions. You will quickly realize how corporations can make any "meaningful" job a drag and unhealthy.
Programming can be extremely meaningful. You can create great things that help society. However, many of those projects won't pay for themselves. So, if I company wants to pay me over six figures to write some code, I will gladly take it.
Plus, I am a nerd, I like building stuff, sheds, racing sims, tinkering on bikes, cars and computers. My ability to tinker with computers, write queries and programming can allow other people to do their jobs. Imagine a health system without a computer.
100% of lawyers I know hate their jobs. I can’t think of a single friend of mine that is a lawyer who enjoys their work.
I have three friends who are anesthesiologists and they are all generally meh about it. They treat it like being a mechanic.
There’s always a flip side to being a helper like a doctor too - not everyone survives surgery. The thing they don’t tell you about doing that emotional labor is that it’s poorly compensated and exhausting and so people tend to dissociate and become less and less compassionate the longer they do it just as a self defense mechanism.
I have three friends who are anesthesiologists and they are all generally meh about it. They treat it like being a mechanic.
There’s always a flip side to being a helper like a doctor too - not everyone survives surgery. The thing they don’t tell you about doing that emotional labor is that it’s poorly compensated and exhausting and so people tend to dissociate and become less and less compassionate the longer they do it just as a self defense mechanism.
Lawyers are bimodal in this regard. Many hate the work with a burning passion. Many love the work and never want to retire. IMO, it really depends on the practice area + role (e.g., M&A work vs. civil rights work or big law attorney vs. AUSA).
My mother has been a nurse in demanding and intense units for nearly 45 years. She finds the work very satisfying and is reasonably well-paid.
I know a number of lawyers who find their work intensely meaningful and are willing to put up with the bull shit despite the challenges.
I know a number of lawyers who find their work intensely meaningful and are willing to put up with the bull shit despite the challenges.
> I have friends who are doctors.....their work doesn't feel meaningful. They are constantly pressured to move from patient to patient like they are cattle.
Yep, doctors stopped being in charge of healthcare entities (hospitals, clinics) and now their work conditions suck. And not just during residency, any more.
> Friend is a pharmacist, she stands 12 hours a day. She he is forced to go in sick. She gets written up for being late.
If there's one thing that would be a shock to life-long programmers, it's how just one tiny step down the in-demand ladder (I'd write "social status", but we don't actually have any of note [doctors do, but fat lot of good that did them when the capitalists finally got ahold of them], rather, we're just in-demand) means operating under management conditions we'd find intolerable. No last-minute-notice skipping out for an hour to take your dog to the vet or whatever, certainly. That kind of shit's reserved for the top half of management, in most other environments.
> Many teachers hate their jobs, they are underpaid and have to deal with all kinds of good/shitty kids.
I don't think any teacher I know would advise anyone to become a teacher. Work environment is shit, the amount of time you get to spend on the part that's why anyone wants to do teaching keeps dropping, parents are jerks with too much time on their hands, admin's the most shockingly-stupid set of people with advanced degrees ever assembled (and a bad case of petty-dictator syndrome), pay & benefits have been slowly (or, recently, not-so-slowly) falling relative to the rest of the economy for at least a couple decades, and half the voters hate you for no good reason. Do. Not. Do. It. [EDIT: Oh, and that describes a decent school district. The bad ones are all that plus a whole pile of nightmarish crap, on top]
Yep, doctors stopped being in charge of healthcare entities (hospitals, clinics) and now their work conditions suck. And not just during residency, any more.
> Friend is a pharmacist, she stands 12 hours a day. She he is forced to go in sick. She gets written up for being late.
If there's one thing that would be a shock to life-long programmers, it's how just one tiny step down the in-demand ladder (I'd write "social status", but we don't actually have any of note [doctors do, but fat lot of good that did them when the capitalists finally got ahold of them], rather, we're just in-demand) means operating under management conditions we'd find intolerable. No last-minute-notice skipping out for an hour to take your dog to the vet or whatever, certainly. That kind of shit's reserved for the top half of management, in most other environments.
> Many teachers hate their jobs, they are underpaid and have to deal with all kinds of good/shitty kids.
I don't think any teacher I know would advise anyone to become a teacher. Work environment is shit, the amount of time you get to spend on the part that's why anyone wants to do teaching keeps dropping, parents are jerks with too much time on their hands, admin's the most shockingly-stupid set of people with advanced degrees ever assembled (and a bad case of petty-dictator syndrome), pay & benefits have been slowly (or, recently, not-so-slowly) falling relative to the rest of the economy for at least a couple decades, and half the voters hate you for no good reason. Do. Not. Do. It. [EDIT: Oh, and that describes a decent school district. The bad ones are all that plus a whole pile of nightmarish crap, on top]
"Programming can be extremely meaningful.
...
Plus, I am a nerd, I like building stuff"
Maybe to you, but not necessarily other people. There are likely people in any role that feel the work is meaningful and fulfilling, and others who do not.
Maybe to you, but not necessarily other people. There are likely people in any role that feel the work is meaningful and fulfilling, and others who do not.
Did I say that programming isn't meaningful? No, I obviously didn't. But thanks for your hostile and blinkered response.
I can think of examples of people in my life who have these professions on either side of the coin (find it meaningful, find it a drag, whatever).
I'm a programmer and find it meaningful. I also know people who are programmers and hate it. In fact, I've also worked as a chef and a teacher. I found there to be both satisfying and unsatisfying things about each of these jobs.
Clearly, different people find different work meaningful.
Having a small percentage of the jobs in society be sufficiently well compensated is a sure path to a large number of people being unsatisfied in their careers.
I can think of examples of people in my life who have these professions on either side of the coin (find it meaningful, find it a drag, whatever).
I'm a programmer and find it meaningful. I also know people who are programmers and hate it. In fact, I've also worked as a chef and a teacher. I found there to be both satisfying and unsatisfying things about each of these jobs.
Clearly, different people find different work meaningful.
Having a small percentage of the jobs in society be sufficiently well compensated is a sure path to a large number of people being unsatisfied in their careers.
I'm not trying to have an argument but you've said "There are many other jobs that frankly provide significantly more meaning and personal gratification to the person doing them". I was providing a counter argument to that statement because it sounded very "the grass is always greener on the other side".
Not sure why you feel I was being hostile towards you. You seem to be really getting defensive in almost aggressive manner.
Not sure why you feel I was being hostile towards you. You seem to be really getting defensive in almost aggressive manner.
> I hope the tech bubble deflates permanently and allows salaries across professions to normalize so that there is more balance in society.
Yeah but normalisation usually involves deflating people's pay instead of increasing that of "Doctor? Teacher? Nurse? Public defender? Chef?". A very odd wish to be honest.
Yeah but normalisation usually involves deflating people's pay instead of increasing that of "Doctor? Teacher? Nurse? Public defender? Chef?". A very odd wish to be honest.
This is actually happening already to a degree. Due to the pandemic work situation and inflation, many lower paying sectors had better wage growth (or at least less real wage loss). Not a large change, but a slight shift.
That’s would be good but i dont think the wage growth is real. Rising prices eat away any pay rise they might get. It could even be that pay is actually getting lower.
Thanks for sharing this piece of news actually makes me happy.
But it would appear that there is effort being made to “correct” it:
> The Federal Reserve should refrain from raising interest rates too fast in the name of controlling inflation. Even a “mild” recession resulting from these actions will do significant harm to low-wage workers and their families.
But it would appear that there is effort being made to “correct” it:
> The Federal Reserve should refrain from raising interest rates too fast in the name of controlling inflation. Even a “mild” recession resulting from these actions will do significant harm to low-wage workers and their families.
You think that my desire for people to be paid relatively equally so that they can pursue what satisfies them is odd?
No, i think the desire to pay others less is. Because that’s what deflating bubbles means - dramatic drop in whatever the context is. The normalisation you are talking about means everyone will be equally underpaid. Or did you think software devs were getting paid by money taken away from other jobs and now suddenly the central government will reallocate it? If anything they’ll get paid less because there’s less tax revenue and more corporate profit.
Why do you think software engineers getting paid less means everyone will be getting underpaid? How are you deciding what the correct level of pay is?
That’s twisting my words and deflecting my question. What i said was that instead of having at least some people earning what everyone else should we will instead have everyone earning a low wage. Worse, cutting pay from software workers would mean less tax paid and less money available. The money will accrue in tax havens and banks well hidden from you and i. Also do you think that software devs are taking money away from the jobs you mentioned? Do you think the money they will loose will be magically diverted to pay raises for workers in other industries instead of filling in the pockets of those inciting this class war?
You seem to be conflating two different things:
1) How personally validating a job is to a person
2) How valuable the job is to society at large.
To see how those might decouple, consider Superman continuously turning a crank to provide limitless energy for society (credit: SMBC [0]). Fabulously valuable to society, extremely lacking in personal validation for superman.
In general, you'd expect salary to correlate with 2, and inversely correlate with 1, since the sense of validation is in effect part of the compensation you're getting from a job. It also seems pretty common to (IMO wrongly) think that 1 and 2 are tightly coupled: the jobs that produce the greatest societal value are the ones that feel the most personally validating. But that's just because modern society is far more complicated than our brains were evolved to handle. Identifying the actual value of a job requires following a complex chain of incentives and value production through the vast networks of businesses and organizations that comprise our world.
Sadly for those instincts, it is probably true that a programmer writing a piece of code that makes $business_process_c56_2 0.1% more efficient, which is then run billions upon billions of times is actually producing more value in net than a teacher who changes the lives of O(1000) kids over their lifetime.
[0]: https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2305
1) How personally validating a job is to a person
2) How valuable the job is to society at large.
To see how those might decouple, consider Superman continuously turning a crank to provide limitless energy for society (credit: SMBC [0]). Fabulously valuable to society, extremely lacking in personal validation for superman.
In general, you'd expect salary to correlate with 2, and inversely correlate with 1, since the sense of validation is in effect part of the compensation you're getting from a job. It also seems pretty common to (IMO wrongly) think that 1 and 2 are tightly coupled: the jobs that produce the greatest societal value are the ones that feel the most personally validating. But that's just because modern society is far more complicated than our brains were evolved to handle. Identifying the actual value of a job requires following a complex chain of incentives and value production through the vast networks of businesses and organizations that comprise our world.
Sadly for those instincts, it is probably true that a programmer writing a piece of code that makes $business_process_c56_2 0.1% more efficient, which is then run billions upon billions of times is actually producing more value in net than a teacher who changes the lives of O(1000) kids over their lifetime.
[0]: https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2305
What's your point? We should all find ourselves alienated as we turn cranks for the rest of our lives, under the assumption that we are maximizing societal value according to some arbitrarily imposed norm which is beyond our ken and outside of our control? Sounds like a great society! I can't wait to live in it!
That's a neat comic, thanks for the link!
>> “But on Wall Street, you work really hard and you make a lot of money. That’s the deal.”
Who still thinks this? There is very little correlation between "hard work" and income.
Who still thinks this? There is very little correlation between "hard work" and income.
Can you tell more about your experience on Wall Street that disproves that? I personally don't have any, but from what I hear from friends and strangers on the internet mostly falls in line with this statement.
Also true from my 16 years experience in tech. May be not hard work as in amount of hours spent, but quality of result certainly correlates with compensation.
Also true from my 16 years experience in tech. May be not hard work as in amount of hours spent, but quality of result certainly correlates with compensation.
I'm speaking generally, but I feel it still applies to Wall Street. Research shows the "hard work" mindset is only a state of mind, and not a correlation of income:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_meritocracy
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-us-still-believes-in-hard-wor...
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/12/17/views-of-the...
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2022/06/29/stuck-on-...
Some specific research looks at "earnings elasticity" between generations:
>> While faith in the American Dream is deep, evidence suggests that the United States lacks policies to ensure the opportunities that the dream envisions. According to the data, there is considerably more mobility in most other developed economies.
https://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobi...
We can conclude there are many factors involved besides a general attitude of "hard work".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_meritocracy
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-us-still-believes-in-hard-wor...
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/12/17/views-of-the...
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2022/06/29/stuck-on-...
Some specific research looks at "earnings elasticity" between generations:
>> While faith in the American Dream is deep, evidence suggests that the United States lacks policies to ensure the opportunities that the dream envisions. According to the data, there is considerably more mobility in most other developed economies.
https://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobi...
We can conclude there are many factors involved besides a general attitude of "hard work".
They're not talking about the general population, they're talking about a niche career where salaries are in large part driven by performance-related bonuses. "On Wall Street" is perhaps too generic, and sure talent will always factor in too, but there are still trading jobs that exist where work output correlates directly with pay. The fact that across jobs nationally the correlation doesn't hold is irrelevant.
Yeah even that is not true. Sure if you have a direct impact on PnL you can expect your bonus to be tied to your performance, otherwise, i.e. 90% of the workforce in an investment bank, you have a fixed grid for bonuses.
Michael Lewis first book was in 1989. Liar's Poker. It's about his career as a bond trader. Pretty hard work. None of his other books make WS sound easy.
Said he'd go to colleges to speak after each book came out. Students saw his books as opportunities, not a warning as intended. Q&A was always "so, where to you think the next boom is?"
He's very grim about it.
Said he'd go to colleges to speak after each book came out. Students saw his books as opportunities, not a warning as intended. Q&A was always "so, where to you think the next boom is?"
He's very grim about it.
Wall street is pretty much tech ... Its all software, systems, infrastructure, UI, reporting/BI, etc. Prob comparable number of SWEs in Wall street compared to big tech.
Software differentiated itself from hardware by means of scale. And then the profits accumulated by said companies created higher wages in those roles. And tech kept booming, and expanding throughout the last 10 or 15 years.
Until supply meets demand, this will continue but I guess the trend is abating or maybe it's just the possible recession for now. Though in the future it will be a mix of incumbents plugging all the vertical holes plus LLMs offering a horizontal suite of products, and then the market calibrating to the new supply.
Eventually though, it feels like majority of the knowledge jobs will be replaced and there would be the need for whole new tier of jobs, and hobbies that people pursue, with a UBI floor.
Until supply meets demand, this will continue but I guess the trend is abating or maybe it's just the possible recession for now. Though in the future it will be a mix of incumbents plugging all the vertical holes plus LLMs offering a horizontal suite of products, and then the market calibrating to the new supply.
Eventually though, it feels like majority of the knowledge jobs will be replaced and there would be the need for whole new tier of jobs, and hobbies that people pursue, with a UBI floor.
I mean wasn't the appeal of this ZIRP-period of startups-for-everything the potential financial gain of stock options packages, so non-techies become techies...if you're going to WS, what's the appeal -- isn't it the trade off that you can make large compensation? It makes sense that the financially motivated are going to follow the financial incentives...
[deleted]
Joining the teams that demand tech companies lower spend on talent and layoff everyone.
this doesn't sound so productive if the extra ones join a zero sum arena battle
Well if we're going to be so reductive I don't think they were ever productive for society to begin with. How many people do we really need working on targeted advertisements and algorithms for social media engagement?
Well if we're going to be so pedantic I didn't say they were ever productive
Haven't you heard? The credit belongs to the who is actually in the arena. And other such corporate platitudes.
The people let go find similar or better jobs in startups which encourages competition. Just because they were let go from a large company does not mean, there is no demand for their skills. In fact there is a huge demand.
All of the companies not Fortune 50 are experiencing a senior talent hiring frenzy. They have record profits and see gold in the failure of giant dinosaurs.
> In tech, employees could work less for the same paycheck.
What?
What?
fWIW it’s layoffs and hiring freezes on Wall Street too. When the fed announces a planned artificial recession, you better get ready by pre-downsizing despite good earnings and continued economic strength. Nothing spells “worse than worst” more than preemptive artificial recession artificial recessions.
This led to an influx of people who would otherwise have gone into banking or consulting or other careers similarly targeted as “elite” professions when graduating from college and to an influx of people from those professions into tech.
I think it bodes well for the sector to have less of this prestige seeking- not because these folks aren’t talented, but because rebalancing the overall tech workforce towards a mix of talent is probably more healthy for people who value working in tech because it’s an area of genuine interest for them.