I'm glad the article posts about visa sponsorship changes, as an immigrant to the US/EU this is the biggest falloff I've seen. Over the years I've seen relocation as a perk slide:<p>2013: Was flown to EU country for an interview, accepted, they handled the immigration paperwork (mostly) and helped me find a place and get settled. Plane trip was at my discretion.<p>2015: Immigrated to US with same company, they handled the visa and gave me help to find a place and get settled. Plane trip was at my discretion.<p>2018: Accepted new job in US, visa was handled however plane trip was 3am in the morning out of Gatwick.<p>2021: Accepted new job in US (after leaving the US for 3 years), visa was handled but I had to pay for my own plane trip. No help with finding apartments or any relocation expenses.<p>2022: Accepted new job in US at FAANG, work permit was handled however visa was not, all expenses to get the visa came out of my pocket (plane tickets, hotel accommodation, embassy appointment). No relocation help or expenses.<p>2023: Accepted new job in US, all work permit/visa issues came out of my pocket including the fee paid to the lawyers for handling the visa application. No relocation help or expenses.<p>Not sure how much further this perk can slide.
The "ZIRP" meme is way overdone by now. ZIRP doesn't explain much. Interest rates had been rock bottom since the 2008 crisis, were already quite low since the 1990s, and are still not very high today.<p>IMO the "vibecession" meme explains what's going on within tech a bit better. Tech CEOs and VCs have decided that the tech industry had to shrink, notwithstanding that the wider economy was and is doing fine.
There is probably a lot of consulting money to be made in cleaning up the mess of the last decade exuberance.<p>Similar to what we saw in banks after 2008.
> Job market realities. It’s tougher than it’s been in a decade, with fewer jobs, and more qualified candidates. This is great if you’re hiring, but harder for applicants.<p>Is this true? Layoffs make the headlines, but the unemployment rate for software engineers seems to be low, at least in the most recent numbers I can find.<p>The rest of the items ("Compensation changes", "Negotiating offers", etc.) just follow from that premise.<p>Of course, everything could tank tomorrow, but it's probably not smart to get into a defensive crouch earlier than you have to.
Roughly, we poured ungodly amounts of capital into building out internet infrastructure for nearly fifteen years (fibre optics, data centres, and yes smartphones count as infrastructure).<p>Just like railway boom and others before, there is a ton of railways going to wrong place, or too much to same place.<p>Businesses will pay good money to<p>a. Find out what they actually have running where<p>b. Move the core in house where it’s cheaper<p>c. Have sensible ways to scale up if needed (that month end report run etc)<p>The work is still there. But demonstrating how much is currently spent on what and how that can be better spent is the real win here.
We are in a downward cycle for Software right now. Are higher interest rates a precipitating factor at the moment? Sure, but there are others as well including the COVID bubble etc.. Our industry was bound for a correction. That said, interest rates alone do not predict a tough market for software engineers since the majority of the .com bubble in the 90's saw 5% percent interest rates.
I think people are overly attributing the end of low interest rates to the current job market in tech.<p>The truth is over last 10-20 years we've gone through a huge technological boom which has driven the job market in tech. In the mid 2000s almost no one knew how to code. Software engineering was more a hobby than a career choice back then. Yet, from 2005-2015 we had innovation after innovation which demanded people with coding skills.<p>This article mentions things like the launch of the iPhone and AWS, but there was so much more than just that. The switch from dial-up to broadband meant people were more frequently using the internet, and using it for more than just web browsing – now they were downloading music, watching videos and chatting to their friends. Then the launch of the iPhone and 3G shortly after meant suddenly the internet was now everywhere all the time, and this spawned businesses like Facebook and Uber who enabled companies like Twilio. And now that everyone was online eCommerce started to boom too which enable companies like Saleforce, Shopify and Stripe.<p>And I could go on here, but our lives are so different today and this shift fundamentally required a large number of software engineers during a time when software engineers were in very short supply.<p>While progress will continue, it seems unlikely we're going to see a repeat what we've seen over the last ~20 years. AI might change our lives significantly, but it's hard to see how AI would make software engineers more valuable given they fundamentally make knowledge and intelligence more accessible.<p>Additionally, today software engineering is a career kids actively pursue, and even if they don't pursue it most kids will still end up doing some basic coding at school.<p>Meanwhile things are getting easier to build all the time. When I was learning to code building anything was a technical challenge. For one, Youtube and Stack Overflow didn't exist. There was no cloud hosting, and no free tier hosting. Programming languages themselves sucked – if you think Java sucks today then try using it 15 years ago. But the biggest changes have been in SaaS where today literally anyone can start an eCommerce store or take payments online in minutes.<p>The things I do as a software engineer today are becoming increasingly niche and a lot of it is just plumbing services together which doesn't take much intellect. And even this can increasingly be done with AI tools.<p>I think tech as an industry is going to do great over the next decade, but they won't need as many software engineers.
The biggest thing that companies need to optimize on - which they don't seem to have caught on to yet - are management processes which create unprofitable overhead.<p>While "overhead" is an overloaded term, in practice it looks like:<p>1. Too much documentation, blog posts, spreadsheets (designed for management optics). Every one of these artifacts takes dev time.<p>2. Excessive stages in CI pipelines, internal tools, saas tools usage (designed for engineering promos). Every one of these takes dev time.<p>3. Excessive features (designed for IC and management promos)<p>4. Excessive amount of time spent in promotions, stack ranking, and performance reviews (designed to make management useful)<p>5. Excessive time on making agile work such as time on Jira story points, backlog grooming, retros, meeting minutes, agendas, scrums (designed to again, make management appear like they are doing something).<p>6. Excessive number of management layers (manager, sr manager, director, sr director, sr sr director, associate vp, vp, svp). Every person on this ladder is overhead*365 days a year.<p>All of these are entirely a problem of management layer overhead.<p>The only and only thing that works in a tough environment is few "skilled" managers who are still very technical and can align people and teams work towards specific goals.
I don't think it means much at all. Software jobs boomed in the 80s and 90s despite high interest rates. Tech tends to do well in almost every econ environment. And already, interest rate forecasts falling.
I don't know. From an employee's perspective there's such a long tail of incompetence in tech. I also have doubts about a large chunk of new CS grads who were born with a smartphone in their hands. Software engineering is only continuing to diverge from CS and the lack of startups will impact their ability to get up to speed compared to older millennials who are now mid-career.<p>If you're used to being the smartest person in the room, or at least the one with the most guts and speaks their mind, nothing is changing for you. Your career is fine as long as you don't work for a startup (anymore) and have at least 5 years under your belt.<p>From a business cost perspective running one is now more expensive. Though it's important to remember how cheap it's always been for tech and how cheap it still is. What's more difficult now is that "hockey stick growth", but that was never easy either.<p>I just gotta shrug here idk.
> The job market is brutal for new grads and early-career developers<p>Getting one's foot in the door has always been hard, but it seems there's another trend here: Computer Science is now the most popular major at many schools. All of those students need a place to go.<p>The rest of the article is behind a paywall.
> while bootstrapping becomes more fashionable<p>The idea that bringing in revenue and bringing in more revenue than you spend was something that fell out of fashion cracks me up and shows the fantasy land we've been living in
The title mangler somehow got from "The end of 0% interest rates: what the new normal means for software engineers" to the incomprehensible "What the The end of 0% interest rates means for software engineers".<p>EDIT: <i>Not</i> complaining about downvotes, just checking site norms. My understanding was that it used to be appropriate to point out failures of the title mangler, so that dang could fix them by hand. (Thanks, dang!) Is that no longer appropriate, or is there some better way to do it?
There will always be a shortage of engaged talented people. FAANG no longer big deals to everyone under the sun doesn’t change this.<p>The big change will be to folks in the middle. There won’t be huge offers for them any more.
> companies sponsored visas and paid for engineers to relocate from abroad ... where the pay is too low for local candidates.<p>Doesn't that violate the "prevailing wage" requirement of the H1B visa?
> It is notable, however, how both the smartphone and cloud computing revolutions of the 2010s coincided with the start of this long ZIRP period:<p>Nope. ZIRP really had nothing to do with the start of the cloud computing revolutions, since the industry was already moving in that direction with outsourced IT, and outsourced SaaS-like stuff (Application Service Providers was the old term for it).<p>I think the reason why IT & Software engineering benefit in most types of rates has to do with efficiencies and profitability.
> To begin a software startup before AWS launched in 2006, a founder needed to purchase and set up servers, then operate them. This required thousands of dollars, and weeks to launch a website. But with a cloud provider, all that was needed was a credit card, and a founder could have a website up and running in minutes, for only a few dollars.<p>Nonsense. colo was very cheap and fast, took minutes or an hour tops to set up. And most startups needed something like webhosting or Ruby/Python hosting, both available.<p>AWS added speed to scale and being lazy with performance.
The end of ZIRP is the tip of the iceberg<p>1. Consolidation. There will be fewer and more powerful tech companies in the future and they will grow and profit as they shrink their headcount. The belief that profits and growth = jobs will soon be recognized as twentieth century thinking.<p>2. Automation. Spiffy tools, reuse, AI...no matter how you slice it, your skills are getting pushed into the shared stack every day.<p>3. Internationalization. You might be surprised to find out that there are React coders in South America that have all the right tats and piercings, read HN and Blind, bang on leetcode...and will work for 1/5 what you will.<p>The only question is how many people leaving tech presently will never be able to get back in, or maybe they just realize driving a Fedex truck for the same money is less stressful.<p>Also don't be too spooked by layoffs so far, its just beginning in tech and finance and this wave still hasn't hit the huge cohort of permanently cashflow-negative startups somehow still clinging to life...they will ALL be gone.
The ZIRP thing makes no sense, very few tech companies were funded by loans besides a bit of convertible notes here and there. Funding for small to medium companies was from VC and acquisitions, bigger tech was funded by stock appreciation and massive profits.
What the end of 0% interest rates means for people who are not software engineers:<p>- less income inequality<p>- less competition in the housing market<p>- less homelessness
If an "employee" is getting paid with borrowed money, for years, and the money will never be repaid, because the "employer" has no profits, because the "business" is a farce, is that really a "job".<p>Perhaps clients and customers will not pay for whatever it is these "employees" do, but investors will pay, so yes, it's a "job" burning someone else's money. However this only lasts for as long as there are no other, more attractive short-term investment options.