So many cycles of irrational exuberance followed by contraction, followed by...<p>If you're passionate about this work and having trouble getting paid for it, remember:<p>You don't need anyone's permission to start solving problems.<p>The last time I looked, we weren't running low on problems that need to be solved.<p>Every contraction I've seen hurts some really good folks, but mostly weeds out the poseurs and wannabe's, the parasites and bureaucrats, while those of us who make, just get back to the business of making.
This is part of a war on tech worker compensation by shareholder activists and other investors, not AI. E.g. <a href="https://www.tcifund.com/files/corporateengageement/alphabet/20th%20January%202023.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.tcifund.com/files/corporateengageement/alphabet/...</a><p>If anything, AI investor FOMO is probably having a fairly positive effect on hiring, but nonetheless it's a good scapegoat if you want to wage a war on tech worker compensation and keep it on the down low.
"He worried about his mortgage payments. He finally landed a job in the spring, but it required him to take a 5% pay cut."<p>Not exactly Grapes of Wrath type material there.
This is anecdotic, but personally I'm seeing much more recruiter activity on my inbox. Specially targeted recruiters for startups.<p>The trend has been going up for the last few months. It's looking like the startup scene is about to warm up again (in the next year or so).
Personally I'm much more worried about AI than a one time decline in demand. Pieces of what's necessary to create a competent software engineering agent are starting to fall into place.
Tech jobs are drying up but like the article says - if you’ve got some serious qualifications in AI - you can get paid 2-4x the amount of other engineers. 7 figure comp is not uncommon for people in AI. It’s also the one type of tech worker that they cannot seem to get enough of.<p>It’s no surprise that the grifters in my professional network all shifted to AI stuff 2-3 years ago. The people who wanted to deliver genuine and good work have all (foolishly?) stayed the same - the folks who chase fame and money all shifted to AI.<p>I’ve been on “sabbatical” for 2.5 years. I saw the downturn and decided to not work. I figured we’d be back to normal by now but considering FB just rescinded my offer - we’re far from it.
Clickbait. Yes, there is a shift but it has little to nothing to do with AI. While there are entire companies getting hyped about generative networks and LLM's(read "managers thinking they will get a fleet of devs for little to no money"), those are the exception and will go extinct sooner or later - I can name a few off the top of my head.<p>There was a huge boom around Covid, sure, when infrastructure was clearly not ready to cope with the demand so as many people had to be dragged into the equation. There were also companies aggressively hiring tech people partially because of the demand but also to establish a monopoly. And the rise of one-online-course developer programs was the cherry on top. That was bound to collapse and Musk's campaign over at Twitter gave everyone the confidence that there's no need for anyone but a few managers and prompt "engineers". And we are reaching the "find out" part for all players involved.<p>If you are a tech worker with skills, then you have absolutely nothing to worry about: AI can only write trivial code which normally would be thrown at an intern - stuff like "write a function that takes in a hashmap containing key-value mappings and a second hashmap to swap out the said keys", which you will likely still need to tweak to make it safe. But for any serious or critical code, if you are relying on a LLM to do the logic for you, you are basically walking around blindfolded, holding a loaded gun pointed at your head. Sadly I know a lot of people who actively do that exact thing.<p>The other part is that the market is over-saturated with products that no one needs. How many more social medias do you need? None. How many more trading platforms? None. How many more messenger apps? None? Dating apps? None. Yet new, "revolutionary" ones pop out daily. Guess how many of them fail? Their marketing campaign was "blockchain" 5 years ago. Now it's "ai". My coffee machine needs neither of those, who are you trying to sell this to?<p>When it comes to the tech sector, people should understand that this is not a bottomless pit and it all boils down to a finite amount of people that will use your product(consciously or not). And by implications you need a finite amount of tech workers. The jobs have not dried up, it's partially normalization after the Covid hype and to a lesser degree managers thinking AI will do their tech work - the same people who have become Musk cult members. I used to work for one and guess what - the company he founded in 2017 with very noble intentions and received a really good funding is collapsing cause they are unable to roll out a product. Those are bound to fail either way.<p>As for courses - there are talented people who have only done a bunch of those, but they are the extreme exception and realistically most of the people who enrolled in those were simply there because they thought that's a cheap ticket to a 6-figure salary.
If you worked for a venture backed startup between 2018 and 2021, you saw the massive growth. Engineering teams doubling every 6 months. New teams spinning up left and right. Excess amounts of junior/boot camp developers. DEI/Employee experience/People Ops teams standing around doing nothing. I for one welcome the steady more tactical approach to hiring.