Thousands of Software Engineers Say the Job Market Is Getting Much Worse::9,388 engineers polled by Motherboard and Blind said AI will lead to less hiring. Only 6% were confident they’d get another job with the same pay.
Tldr pandemic and not AI
One single factor is never the source of a problem. It can be both things causing this.
Technology changes too fast today to plan for a 30 year career doing the same thing in a constantly changing world. Anyone with the skillet should take this as a beacon and pivot, whether keeping the skills fresh and branching out into new ventures with them (i.e. spend some time thinking, get a few peers, make a new product or service to sell to others instead of being cheap labour for someone else’s idea), or dropping the skills for another one that isn’t likely to get pulled out from under your feet suddenly.
I think we’ll need plumbers for a while still, and you can make over $100k/year never touching a shitty pipe.
Anyone who knows anything about software development is not scared by some article with journalists who kniw nothing writing about “AI”
Anyone who knows anything about labour relations knows that AI is a front line worker replacement. You aren’t killing all jobs, but how about you tell me the % of workers in the field that won’t be needed to create blocks of code which people get to review moving forward.
Theyll change the whole workflow on you if it saves them money.
the % of workers in the field that won’t be needed to create blocks of code which people get to review moving forward.
that’s a very low percentage, I have been using Github’s copilot for a year, it’s a decent productivity tool, it can do stuff like save me the time of googling how to sort an array, because I rarely do it and always forget the exact syntax, and just offer me the solution, so saves a few minutes, stuff like that, but Software Engineers are literally always developing tools to increase productivity a developer now can do more in a day than a developer 15 years ago, for example for Frontend I reckon REact/Angular/Vue did more for productivity than Copilot ever will.
and that’s how the world moves forward, we have been increasing productivity of workers, and it’s not a bad thing, this “AI” is just another tool to use for that.
the issue is to call this thing AI, chatGPT and the like are Large Language Models, basically calculators for words, so instead of inputting numbers you input words and it spits out something at you, is it correct ? who the fuck knows, the “AI” for sure does not, it has no intelligence, no concept of things, no creativity, it’s not a replacement for humans it’s a tool, like a calculator.
Fully agree that this is a tool to use. But new tools eliminate jobs throughout human history. ICE eliminated a ton of blacksmithing jobs when you didn’t need so many horseshoes. Excavators eliminated groups of workers physically digging ditches.
Progress is good, it helps society, but it has a danger to leave behind the people which helped to create the system that eliminated their need. There needs to be a safety net or a transitional plan for these people to ensure we all continue to succeed. That doesn’t really exist in our current capitalist environment.
Plumbers and welders don’t make that money, that’s just something people say on the internet…
It’s not just software engineering. It’s anyone in tech. Product, UX, Data science / analytics, research, etc. Been this way for about 18 months.
That said, as someone on the UX side of the technology fence, if anyone needs a second set of eyes on a resume or portfolio, DM me and I can take a gander. I’m not hiring now, but I am a hiring manager, and I know what my peers are looking for.
Absolutely the case. I’m a motion designer and thank god I work on the partnship side of my business because that’s actually bringing in money, while the owned and operated businesses are failing. All of tech has just been under the knife the last 18 months and it’s exhausting. We’ve lost two people and no new hires because it’s not in the budget.
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Network Engineer here and it has gotten much harder to get even a call back from a recruiter.
How are you reaching out to opportunities?
I’ve found that I get the most bites by hanging out in industry related slack groups.
Indeed or LinkedIn, mostly
It might be worth checking in with old peers to see if anyone is in some interesting career communities on slack or discord. It can be a lot easier to network and connect with hiring managers in those environments.
Appreciate the tip! I have found that at my level (IC4 close to IC5) it’s not so much what you know but whether you are a good culture fit.
The job market is worse now than it was a couple years ago. It’s not AI’s fault, blame the Federal Reserve Bank and the interest rates. Blame VC, who’ve been relying on 0 interest loans for so long they don’t know how to actually take a risk any more, and will no longer fund startups. Blame cowardly executives of established companies, who are no longer seeing sales numbers increase exponentially forever.
This is what non-zero interest rates do to a motherfucker.
We need universal basic income.
Universal Basic Income to mean sounds like trickle up economics with extra steps. All of does is reward automation and inordinately support the wealthy.
What we need is a society that takes little stock in currency.
Edit: read my comment under here for better understanding. UBI is a capitalist solution to a capitalist problem.
What exactly do you think universal basic income is?
Wealth redistribution. The problem is that we funnel is directly back through purchases providing an inordinate amount of power to the owner class.
In a bizarre way our existence will be allowed only to subsidize the wealthy.
At that point we should ditch money all together.
Follow the money. It goes from the wealthy to the government (taxes), to us to the wealthy through our purchases. Repeat
Why on earth would we allow this profiteering middleman? At that point we should live under communism (not saying thats a bad thing). Its just simpler.
Those who own the means of automation will live lavishly while the rest of us are given just enough to not revolt.
UBI is not about wealth redistribution. The easiest way I’d describe it is if we created food stamps but for cash.
And the phenomenon you are describing where the rest of society is subsidizing the wealthy is our current reality.
UBI in a sense ditches the concept of money as an incentive tool for productivity.
I was responding to the idea that our jobs are going to be automated away.
Which is exactly what I said’ The “productive” (those with the means of automation)
Will live lavishly while the “unproductive” ( the rest of us) will not.
I agree our current reality sucks. Im saying that UBI, as opposed to a moneyless society) is exactly what the wealthy would prefer
The capitalist solution to a capitalist problem. Do not mistake my opposition of UBI to me being pro capitalist. Its exactly the opposite.
Don’t buy the lies. AI cannot automate everything and the jobs it will replace are ones that aren’t of much value in the age of improved efficiency (which is what AI really is).
Though I won’t argue that the owners of AI will be the winners of whatever revolution comes out of this whole cacophony of noise.
Follow the money. It goes from the wealthy to the government (taxes), to us to the wealthy through our purchases.
And right now it goes from the poor to the government (taxes) to the wealthy, and we don’t get fuck all.
You’re saying you’d rather have nothing than have something.
Im saying if we are going to be making radical changes, which I am in favor of, why stop there?
Its like we cant even conceive of a world without capitalism.
In the long term yes. But we need a complete systems revamp before that’s possible without creating a situation where a lot of people starve to death. UBI works great as a patch over, and while automation is still getting off the ground. As a solution to an automated economy it sucks. It’s asking to have questions like, “how many loafers can we remove from the system without people revolting this year?” Or the creation of premium dollars that seem to only go to the owner class and goes with scarcity of supply as the wealthy become more and more detached from everyone else and shut down facilities to save on costs.
Basically it risks A Brave New World. Instead we need to make it clear that an automated economy is there for everyone and thus is owned by everyone.
I was laid off last year. Got a job after a while and just survived another layoff today. I agree with this assessment.
It’s all post-pandemic stuff. Executives thought growth would continue, and it didn’t. Then they had to take account for their decisions and make others suffer for them.
That’s the funny thing. Common sense says things go back to a sense of normal. Executives lack common sense or foresight.
Normality. That would be nice. Where the rich and powerful… (checks history books)… use their riches and power to get more riches and power.
In all honesty, yes, things will go back to normal. Layoffs shouldn’t be as common in the future, it’s just still post-pandemic stuff we have to get through. Executives will always be cold, but hopefully they won’t expect massive growth in the future and then not get it.
Its not even about the growth, publicly traded companies do layoffs because it makes the stock price go up.
You should be worried when small and midsized comapanies do layoffs that are not publicly traded
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Although this surely does not completely explain the situation, I also have a feeling these sorts of hires surely account for a substantial number of layoffs.
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As if the people making the firing decisions knew the people they fired and their “good attitude” before COVID.
This is plainly just the financial class pushing back against recent advances in wages by inducing a recession.
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I’ve spent the last 18 months learning how to program so I could get a job that doesn’t make me want to kill myself, not being ironic, and now this bullshit. Am I just forever doomed to be miserable and just not enjoy anything or have a single break in life?
Downturns happen. They don’t last forever. There is a lot of pressure from businesses to depress wages and get more work out of software engineers and IT and etc., since we’re one of the few classes of workers who actually get paid. But thinking that developers will be replaced by AI anytime soon is wishful thinking on the part of the bosses. 20 years ago it was how we’d all get replaced by dirt cheap engineers overseas. Well, I’m still waiting on that to happen. If the MBAs could clearly and unambiguously articulate exactly what needs to be implemented, then maybe it would work. But if they can’t do that when we’re all in a conference room together then they’re sure as shit not doing it over email with a 12 hour time difference.
Keep your head up and keep trying to get an entry level gig somewhere. It doesn’t have to be Google or some hotshot startup or even a tech company. Doing IT or websites for an insurance company is still good experience.
If the MBAs could clearly and unambiguously articulate exactly what needs to be implemented
LOL if only… If this happened, we’d need half as many engineers, even without AI. It feels like a third of my work hours are dedicated to figuring out what the fuck they actually want, and half of them are dedicated to building the wrong thing because they change their mind or didn’t say something.
Shit makes me feel like I should go into management but you could not pay me enough to sit around and talk to these people for 8 hours a day.
Sure, AI would solve some problems if people could actually ask the right questions. But engineers are already being paid to be those translators on their own since companies cannot find any other way to solve this problem.
Yup. My boss is an engineer by training and I would not take his job, even if it got me the extra $50k per year he makes
Hell, even project managers who used to be engineers have trouble figuring out what they need. The reason engineers/general technical folk are valuable is because their job is to pick through the guesswork laid by management and formulate an actual working thing, regardless of whether it’s a physical object or a button on a website.
Current language learning model AI has no chance if you can’t actually formulate what you really need.
I can make AI write code for me, but actually knowing what I need it to write is more than half the battle
Coding skills are almost always valuable even if you’re not coding directly. Depending on what you’re good at/interested in, I’d recommend data analysis (everyone has data! Gotta look at it somehow), database management, engineering roles other than just software engineering, IT, etc. Might not pay exactly as well as a big coding job out the gate, but it’ll certainly be interesting if you like coding.
Not if you unionize
Don’t dispair. Deep and wide skillsets are always valuable. Continue to build your skills and specialize in areas that your peers don’t.
Target your region too if you aren’t fully remote. Different parts of the country have different trends for tech that is in demand. For instance, I work in IT, and the state that I am in for some reason is by and large Microsoft tech stacks, (no I’m not in Washington.) So .NET and C# devs are in high demand here, as are IT people who have experience scripting with Powershell and developing/administrating in Azure environments. But other areas will be more AWS or Google-centric, or even other stuff.
Identify the trends, figure out what people are looking for and what isn’t being met as a need, then train in that.
I work as an “API Consultant” but I do a lot of coding and there’s room to move into an engineer role in the future. So there’s still stuff out there.
My brother was going to school for pharmacy work, but ended up hating it. He mostly was in it because he got thrown into the pharmacy at Walgreens, and they were paying for his schooling.
So he switched over probably about the same time.
I’m thinking maybe he should have just stuck with the free school.
Same for me
This article isn’t really saying anything. It’s just saying that a lot of people feel like the job market has gotten tougher, but we don’t have any solid evidence to prove that.
Personally, I recently got a new software development job, and it was offered to me from the very first company I interviewed for. (This is out of the ordinary for me, as during past job searches it took me several interviews before I got an offer.) Did I get a job quickly this time because the job market is better, because I’ve become a better candidate, or because I got lucky? It’s impossible to say. Anecdotal evidence doesn’t really mean anything when it comes to market competitiveness IMO.
Exactly. I see an insane amount of job postings for my particular field in IT and people are changing jobs left and right in my circle. Which is also anecdotal, so there is that.
Also having gone through this process from the other side of filling two IT positions at my company, the options are slim. Our company is adjusting all pay brackets to be more competitive, because of the smaller talent pool.
I also just got a new job jan 1st. Submitted applications for a few positions, got an interview with 1 and an offer. 40% salary increase. Meanwhile my company was talking about how they couldn’t offer any raises because the job market was so bad right now lmao.
Negotiated myself a 15% raise last year by getting a competitive job offer from a neighboring firm.
Admittedly, I’m not a Stanford brat getting fuck-you high six figures from Palantir for doing fancy powerpoints at the DoD. Maybe that’s the jobs that are going away.
AI has very little effect on my job. When the common task I’ve given is ‘write an ASN.1 parser that will fit into 100Kb flash’, AI can only copy code from existing ASN.1 libraries, and both of them are GPL-licensed, so it’s no-go for a proprietary firmware.
AI has very little effect on any software engineer’s job
So what the article says is not supported by my personal experience. Hmmmmm.
Oh well, it’s probably a Silicon Valley specific thing.
I don’t think they are engineers. AI isn’t anywhere near replacing engineers yet.
The thing about software is that once it does replace a technical job, it replaces basically the whole industry. Physical machines at least generated new jobs building and configuring the individual new machines. Software doesn’t need to be built each time, and the better AI gets the less necessary configuration is.
AI engineers, in general, are in the future, sure. But don’t be fooled into thinking that all engineers are that far in the future. All AI has to do is replace the majority, with a few senior engineers to give their work a once-over. It’s not about total replacement, it’s about decimation.
I believe it will take at least 15-20 years before the majority of engineers can be replaced. I do agree it will happen eventually. But my point wasn’t about what will happen in the future. It was about whether engineers are losing their jobs due to AI at the present moment, as the article claims.
Yeah 15-20 feels right. But I’m talking about the bottom up. When AI replaces people, it’ll start with the junior roles doing grunt work. I would not be surprised if entry level engineering positions are currently beginning to be displaced, or at minimum new openings evaporating.
I disagree. There are tons of software improvements that reduce the amount of grunt / unnecessary work devs do all the time, and I never hear or see anything about layoffs due to those.
Update from using Python / JS / C / Java to using Rust? You’re going to be way more productive long term because you’re not nonstop debugging shitty runtime issues and ancient legacy XML based configurations nobody knows about. Does that mean we lay people off since we’re way more efficient now? No.
I doubt it has to do with AI, feels more in line with rising global inflation
I would say the general job market is getting worse 🤔
Unemployment has been under 4% for a record time. The boomers are all leaving faster than zoomers can get hired. Tech outsourcing is increasingly seen as a path to managerial failure, as these cheapo firms fail to produce real value and talented professionals run circles around their shitty products. And we’re experiencing something of an industrial renaissance in the US, thanks to the battery boom.
The job market is as good as its been since at least the Bush Era and the Jobless Recovery. It just sucks because working conditions generally speaking have deteriorated so heavily from the 70s-era nadar.
The 2017 tax bill that the Republicans rammed through had a time bomb in it for software developers. Starting in 2022, companies could no longer expense R&D costs, and instead had to amortize them over 5 years. This has led to massive tax bills in 2023 for companies. I have no doubt that this is another major factor in the recent tech layoffs.
Take an imaginary bootstrapped software business called “Acme Corp.” This company generates $1,000,000 of revenue per year running a SaaS service. It employs five engineers, and pays each $200,000. That is $1,000,000 paid in labor costs. For simplicity, we omit other costs like servers and hosting, even though those costs can also fall under the new R&D rules, and have to be amortized. So, how much taxable profit does this company make?
In 2021, the answer would be zero profit. In 2022, the answer was $900,000 in profits(!!)
https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-will-us-companies-hire
That doesn’t make sense because salaries are a current expense, not a capital expense to be amortized. And why 5 years? The work a software engineer does may be outdated in a year or two. Only certain legacy applications are around for 5 years.
The amortization time period is supposed to match the usefulness of the item purchased. Basically, software engineers are an ongoing expense, not R&D.
Only certain legacy applications are around for 5 years.
Oh if that were true.
Those are the legacy applications. This is the survivor bias 100%. You don’t see all the projects that were created and then dumped after a year or two (see Google).
Real laughing-crying emoji hours.
I’ve got a friend who got his job entirely because he’s under 40 and knows Fortran.
This is old news though. The article is a poll of engineers, which means that the “news” is what we already know.
AI may lead to less hiring but it’ll also lead to more software developers creating new competing software, services and technologies.
The likes of Microsoft, Google and Meta may have greatly underestimated the change this may bring to the industry.
Fuck
