When with the software developer jobs come back? A few different ways to consider how things might pan out, ranging from traditional interest rate models to the impact of low-code/no-code, AI and robotics on investment.
Repeal Section 174, allow companies to expense R&D salaries for the year they are paid out. Currently, as of 2022, companies must amortize salaries over 5 years, notice the layoffs started in late 2022.
Also, NY times reports tech unemployment is 3.3 percent, compTIA says 2.2 percent. So what is it? Feels like 10%. I have 15 years of cloud dev experience, yet have been unemployed for a year and 3 months, had several interviews, but no offer. Why is this? I think the compTIA is not reporting the actual unemployment rate, and 3.3 percent, doesn't seem like the real value.
@@jakeleone8944 My guess is that the difference is due to methodology, not sure how much detail they post about how they calculate. The deltas over time are probably more helpful / interesting. About 4-8 weeks ago I did a search on indeed for "java" in the US and got about 20k hits, on Friday I think it was down to 12k hits. WRT offers etc impossible to say other than I know a lot of people are experiencing similar, and the layoffs have been huge for the last 6-12 months. I'm seeing people saying they are applying to 200+ jobs w/o getting even an interview, so I guess you are doing ok on that scale. :\ If you didn't watch the tips for Java devs vid I did, check that one out. It's 90%+ valid for other stacks as well, might be some helpful stuff there...
I was, I think 21 and sitting next to a 19 year old kid at COMDEX in 1995 working on a laptop. I thought I was awesome for my new job at Symantec making like $45k. I asked him what he was doing and he said "writing HTML for a bank in SF for $125/hour". Crazy times.
We told everyone for 10 years to be a SE. Imagine if there was a decade where everyone told everyone that the fastest way to a comfortable life was learning how to be a plumber. What if there were plumbing boot camps. What if there were hundreds of thousands of self-taught plumbers and they still couldn't keep all the jobs staffed. Plumbers were in such demand that they would secretly work two jobs and do just enough to not get fired at each. Then the building bubble pops and capital dries up. No new construction. No new plumber jobs. Big business realizes you don't need nearly as many plumbers to maintain as you do to grow, so half of the plumbers get laid off. And then, just as that dust is about to settle, an industry-shaking breakthough in plumbing automation happens...
The hilarious part is how many devs I know that are literally thinking of switching into plumbing, thinking it's like a 3-6 month just-read-a-book thing. ::sigh::
@@ChangeNode I actually have a bit of a problem related to that, I worked as a SE for the last 4 years, but I got laid off a few months ago, and I haven't really been able to find a job just yet. Anyway my step-father owns a small construction company and keeps trying to push me into becoming a plumber or an electrician, he doesn't consider programming "real work" 😅
the difference is nobody wants more plumbers but they sure as hell want more engineers cause it keeps the talent pool high, consequences for the less fortunate be damned, that yacht is waiting
@@frank13621 a huge demand for lack of supply, nobody is pushing for more tradesman cept the ones suffering those shortages, the STEM push on the other hand is multifaceted, they want more engineers even though they already have an overabundance of them...there's a big difference
hey I know probably the toughest is on juniors. Focus on what you can do: STUDY as if you were starting from scratch and create a startup, regardless wether you're a developer or not. I understand it makes no sense but even if you don't actually create one it can serve as resume when asked in interviews: what problems are you trying to achieve? what's the plan? how should be done? 🦾
if you are still in your 20s, switch careers immediately. I changed to web around 2021, worked as a developer then got laid off. now I can't find anything, even though I have experience. it sucks because I am pushing 40 and ageism in this field is very real. I have no idea what I am going to do. I can't switch careers anymore, it's too late. I am fucked. You still have time to pivot.
Quit my full stack software developer job recently after 20 years of IT career. I found it impossible to wear all the shoes. Front end, back end, Devops, cloud computing, automated testing, security... I had been pushing myself beyond and beyond. I have severe burnout now. Endless headaches and clinical depression. So, guys, if you are young and smart it's maybe a great chance now to choose another career now rather then continue with software development.
@@iGhostr there are just no choice, especially if you’re not from the US, either it will be 1000$ a month outsource sweat shop, or you’ll search for a job for years, but if you live from salary to salary you’ll be homeless soon this way. I searched for a year, multiple times was like two days from being on street, and all i found is 1000$ a month job and environment is very toxic so I’m burnt out completely and can’t even search for another job.
@@iGhostr i'm already in affordable country, but even here you need to rent and eat, and here in latam for example you need to pay more to live in a safe area, kinda wish to move to asia because of this, but it's expensive move. So for example salary is 1k, rent and food and some expendables 700$ i can keep 300 so in 10 months i will have some money saved for 4 months, but what next, how much i need to find a job, this all just sucks and not a very good life, also shitty jobs not stable, they can fire you anytime, on my previous one owner fired everyone in one day without notice and didn't paid for last month, this was a huge hit.
It does seem that way. Especially with modern software tools (including AI) making building your own app or product so simple and easy now, there's no reason everyone shouldn't be doing it.
Emergency fund? I've always lived month for month and I learned how to code with the dream of finally earning enough to start saving and not thing so much of money every month, but obviously a little too late. I've never had money for more than a month and a half at my bank account and I am sure I am not the only one. If you are able to not work for 6+ months you're very lucky!
With layoffs and jobs being transitioned to short term contract roles, it becomes challenging to have a role long enough to save that much especially with the strong possibility that you might be depleting your savings every 3-6 mos on a regular basis.
@@mr.random8447 You are right. For example, I had a 1 yr contract and saved 4.5 mo. I was pretty satisfied with myself. Still not enough when you are facing long-term unemployment.
These tech jobs were basically a mirage. It’s all been a game of free money, rock-bottom interest rates, and founders/vc's using head count as a proxy for the success of their company. This environment got the attention of people (who have no business being in tech), convinced by youtubers, that it's possible to cram into a boot camp, spend 8 weeks learning how to center a div in order to land a $150k dev position. It’s ridiculous, but thankfully the world is healing. To your point on low-code apps to avoid engineers. This been available, and it nearly fails every time. It called outsourcing. It works initially, but the moment you need to evolve or change, it falls off a cliff. I liked your take though.
Yeah, I've sat in the room with a lot of CFOs that would say stuff like, "but I see devs overseas for $20, why am I paying you guys" The projects fail, but the rates are cheap, and by the time it gets sorted basically everyone loses. I do think there are a lot of what back in the day were Access DB apps that nowadays are just done with low/no code stuff like Airtable, Wix, etc. Wordpress of course.
I am sorry you and @ChangeNode had bad experiences with outsorcing. There are ways around it though. In countries like Costa Rica they are in a similar time zone, they are taught correct and technical english, and there are lots of cultural similarities that enables good collaboration. I don't doubt that these people are professionals but communication can be tricky. Also those teams usually have some members from the US and they produce the same work (and still get paid 4x the money). So it's more about the team than it is an issue with outsorcing. Just remember there are hundreds of companies that were built this way successfully.
@@ChangeNode I am sorry you and @JohnMcclaned had bad experiences with outsorcing. There are ways around it though. In countries like Costa Rica they are in a similar time zone, they are taught correct and technical english, and there are lots of cultural similarities that enables good collaboration. I don't doubt that these people are professionals but communication can be tricky. Also those teams usually have some members from the US and they produce the same work (and still get paid 4x the money). So it's more about the team than it is an issue with outsorcing. Just remember there are hundreds of companies that were built this way successfully.
@@nicolasguillenc It's all very complicated. I had a conversation with an Agile software dev company based in Costa Rica, oh, I want to say, 10 years ago and they were really great. They said that their clients always insisted on coming to visit. :) In the US at least, there are countless examples of people being fired from their jobs and being replaced with cheaper companies outside the US or local contractors (usually with far fewer benefits and protections). Both of these are often short-handed in conversation as outsourcing. This has been a trend at least since the 1970s. In many cases the laid off employees are told that they will only get severance packages if the employee agrees to spend a few months training their replacement. This has affected almost every sector of American life - from manufacturing to software development. Making it even more complicated, at the same time, people in the US also benefit by importing these inexpensive products and services. The core challenge is that if someone loses their income/career telling them that they can buy products/services for less is cold comfort. The analogy to AI and robotics is the same - people losing their job don't really care about the macroeconomic deflationary situation. If you lose your job to outsourcing to another human or an AI, either way you've lost your job. There are some interesting parallels to employees contributing to 401k and pension plans. Those plans create pools of money seeking returns, which in turn invest in equity and hedge funds that pressure companies to do layoffs to increase profitability, and then in turn those companies lay off the people saving money for retirement. Similarly the pressure to outsource/automate. It's all so endless complicated. Even more so when, oh, you are trying to write scripts for RU-vid and keep it under ten minutes. 😬🤷♂
Hey, just wanted to say that I enjoyed this video. Seeing someone talk in a down-to-earth manner and based on facts is a fresh air over all the other "here's 5 game changing things that will impact x" type of videos. Please keep this style.
Thanks! My wife and I were just talking about how exhausting a lot of the vids w/the hyperedits are. My biggest challenge is trying to keep them down to ~10 minutes instead of just rambling on for an hour. ;)
Amen. Usually it’s some 22-year-old CS dropout wired up on Red Bull and telling us he knows everything there is to know about the software industry. It’s nice to see more measured and credible videos from people who, in fact, do know about the industry
@@ChangeNode well, you’ve actually spent decades in the industry and have real wisdom to share. I can understand why it’s hard to condense your videos when you have more to offer than just fluff lol
Hey, found this video very informative and down to the point. Im in a similar situation to most developers right now. got laid off at the end of last year as a junior developer. I haven't been able to find a job and I'm debating whether to go back into school to either get a new software degree (I dropped out to work for the previous company) or to just pick up something more trade related like mechanical engineer or electrician. I hope all the people watching/reading this that are in a similar position have the best of luck!
Good luck - lot to sort out. If you go check out trades be sure to check the licensing process for your location, eg in WA state it can take a while. FWIW my guess is most kids are going to run away from software dev and so in a few years there will be a shortage. But very hard to say for sure 🤷♂️
Indeed, I have 6+ years of experience and I still got hit the same. I was lucky that I purchased things like welding equipment before any of this happened so now I can put it to use.
i just survived a 3 month layoff. they were trying to low ball me and have me do everything that falls under and outside of the SDLC. they want the engineers to handle backend, qa, devops, frontend, architecting, cloud, admin, and support also, there seems to be very few entry level jobs. majority positions are SR, LEAD, STAFF, or PRINCIPLE
I've been writing code professionally for 30 years. Over the last year I've very much integrated AI into my workflow and use it extensively. It's probably made me 2 or 3 times more productive - not least because software developers don't spend all their time actually writing new code. A lot more is spent figuring out what code to write. When I first wrote code it was Fortran and C and pretty much on the bare metal. At a guess I'm now about 100 - 1000 x more productive in terms of outputs than I was 30 years ago. Modern IDEs, API and Libraries for eveything, better languages, Frameworks etc etc. AI gies me another boost - but how is it different from what's gone before? This is at least the 3rd time in 30 years I've been told coding is over. Frankly although it will change, I don't see anything that makes me think it we're done here.
Agreed. Auto-workers in the late 1950 - early 1960s were correct to be concerned about the changes automation would bring, but the jobs didn't just all disappear at once. In fact, there are still auto-worker jobs today in the US -- just fewer of them. Focus on the fact that you are aware of the changing landscape and you are being warned to prepare and plan. Use your time wisely.
I think the difference between auto makers and software is that there are only so many cars to sell. The demand for software is much more elastic -- "is it worth automating X? Yes, if it is cheaper than Y". So, if software becomes easier to write we should expect more investment into software in general, not less. What we're seeing now is the business cycle, not the AI apocalypse.
@@doublereedkurt1 Absolutely agreed about the AI apocalypse. I am only talking about the historical relationship between economics and human labor capacity. The same thing happened with the introduction of steam power, mechanization, electricity, etc. At every point in American history where the productivity of human labor spikes, corporations reap the benefits while employees gain virtually nothing. If a production studio can suddenly make 10 widgets with only three people that had previously required a crew of 30 to make one, there are layoffs. We like to imagine that the company trains up the 27 old employees so that everyone benefits, but that isn't how corporations operate. They will hire 27 entry level people who already have expertise in the new tech, further resulting in the CEO/CTO getting a bonus for being so clever, while the 27 old employees lose their homes. It doesn't matter that this productivity spike is software. It doesn't change how corporations work.
It takes a lot of knowledge to get the AI to work on a solution. There's a lot of back and forth with the AI (which is why Google search engines are obsolete when it comes to asking even simple coding questions) in order to fill in the gaps of the questions we ask of it. For example, asking the AI to make a simple regex usually turns out to be...not so simple most of the time. But also philosophical questions like static methods, coupling, refactoring, unit tests, and so on will usually take dozens of questions to the AI. A lot of my AI questions are philosophical questions that does indeed make me a much better coder. And I think that's AI's strength...it allows you to not worry too much about the details of coding/refactoring but on the business rules that the program supports. It's the business rules that are complex and require senior programmers, not usually the coding itself.
And when you quit that, they tell you go be a software engineer or do something in biology: which pays pennies on the dollar. Classic situation of you're F ed in all ways.
I feel that these tools are lowering the barrier for people to start businesses not necessarily getting into Software Dev. Back when WordPress came out I felt that my job was over...who would hire a developer if they can make a WordPress site...well i learned people who use these low code or no code tools still need people who know how to make changes on the fly...even with the advent of AI, they will still need someone who knows if the AI is correct. Also, most businesses are too busy to maintain an app or website or service themselves...we will get into a situation where people will create a bunch of apps...turn them into companies...and need Devs to maintain them because they just dont have time or focus to learn how to do it themselves
I am currently employed at a company in Australia where its flagship app still runs on AngularJS 1.5 on the front end. Year after year, it continues to attract more than 10 million visits. Occasionally, we add small features or deprecate existing ones. Imagine all those applications that have been built over the years with the current tech stack and are expected to be used for the next 10+ years. There are both good and bad aspects to this. Not all developers will be willing to work with a tech stack that was deprecated 10 years ago.
exactly if all are in the same boat, it incentivizes the people to start something. This itself creates more jobs. But the definition of the job will change. it will be something like "fix/add/remove something and get paid" instead of "9 to 5 404 paid holidays". The idea of paycheck will disappear, it will be kind of freelancer economy instead of corporates. sometimes change is necessary no matter how comfortable we are with the old ways.
That means less stability/consistency that eats away at things like settling down having kids or buying a house... Taking on more loans or credit cards as buffer lol
Thats exactly the plan. Pretty much the entire corporates and especially the banks have attacked the concept of a family life with a single income. @@dallysinghson5569
Insightful! Thank you very much for your analysis. The increase in commodification of software (AWS, Low code, no code), AI assisted development needing less dev hours to produce the same output, interest rates - I loved how you connected these as the potential factors for the current market. I love how you also showed where the investment is. I would highly appreciate follow up videos that explore these macro trends and their impact of demand reduction and creation in different areas. Thanks again!
As a guy in my 40s who has loved coding pretty much all my adult life but only recently broke into the industry officially about four years ago, it’s been an interesting time for me to come on board. Subbed to the channel. Good to have a calm, rational and experienced guide through these choppy waters
@@jjjj5452 I don’t think you did. This video was informative, but at the end of the day it’s one person‘s opinion. I think we are still a long ways away from autonomous AI coding agents that can do work anywhere near comparable to a human programmer
Dont give up. I graduated in statistics in 2018 and it took me 3 months of applying to jobs every day before I got a bite and a job offer across the country. I know it can be tough but dig deep and continue to build your skills. Data engineering is solid and if you have some basic coding knowledge you can spin up your own example AWS servers and SQL database examples pretty easily. Spend your days working on your skills and resume, apply to jobs and remember people always need hard working capable people. If you put work into your skills every day you're already ahead of 90% of people and you will find a job.
@@chickenbroski99 can a fresher get a data engineering job ? I have a couple of projects in data analytics and machine learning. And am proficient in sql python power bi and know a bit of aws also
@@chickenbroski99 Thank you for sharing your experience and your encouragement chickenbroski (nice name too). Knowing that I'm not alone and that I will be needed somewhere helps a lot. I will keep the faith and keep trying - I hope others in a similar boat can find what they need to do the same. Also, I actually have worked as a data engineer, do you think those roles might have more opportunities?
it's one thing to be automated out a factory where you showed up in your dirty jeans and they trained you, fed you, and then you got to basically turn your brain off and get paid ... it's a WHOLE different dystopia when you look at the white collar whipeout we are living through where the WORKER had to pay 6 figures of college and YEARS of focus at their craft ... truly truly dystopian
This largely underestimates what it takes to become a master craftsman in a factory, I think It comes down to obsolescence feeling different when someone is doing it to you instead of you doing it to someone else
I transitioned from front end dev to full stack a couple of years ago thinking that picking up Python would help me but I really just shot myself in the foot as my front end skills got a bit stale and I don’t have enough backend/full stack experience to get a new job after being laid off 9 months ago. Also everything is moving incredibly fast. There’s a whole bunch of new technologies that didn’t exist 2 years ago that job postings are listing as required experience. It’s so hard to keep up, and so much more expensive and time consuming to do portfolio projects incorporating this new stuff.
Same as a former front end dev myself. Who also adapted the full stack development shit is hard to keep constant. But speaking from experience find some music that you enjoy listening to and that helps you want to learn. You'd be surprised how much it helps For me it's vaporwave
Over hiring was incredible in the last few years. It was unbelievable how corporations could hire with not more than a couple of hours of work for those hired. All this needs to get flushed first before hiring can start again.
I changed path after 2 years from software developer to solution architect, it feels pretty good honestly and I like making personal connections with the customers for example.
The number of software developers is doubling every 5 years. 2021-2022 was an overhiring period and we are recovering from that. Also, in the early 2000s i was doing linux stuff. Thanks to the cloud managing a server is a whole lot easier. Same with coding, things are just better now
There's no shortage of SE SD but we keep hearing about shortages probabyl from folk trying to sell courses or companies looking to hire or outsource avroad
@@dallysinghson5569The thing is that’s what they shovel these people into. There’s plenty of tech roles like devops, webdev, IT, etc but everyone wants to be a software engineer lmao
Thanks for sharing your insights. I know someone who has 2 years left in their CS degree trying to figure out type of project classes and skills to focus on, and this will help.
1991 grad (which could have been 1990, but I took my time) and could relate to the comment "Finishing a CS degree was just something nerdy guys do". Some of my friends were in other forms of engineering, and none of us viewed programming as something to pursue for big bucks. It was just a choice, pre-internet ... like going into electrical, or mechanical engineering.
Yeah. I had friends back then that went into stuff like that and IMHO they worked way harder with a lot more math. I wound up focusing on the dev side and made quite a bit more. I remember going into Carl's Jr with one guy right out of school and he realized that given the hours he was working he was making less than a CJ manager. He wasn't even mad, just... sad.
All software jobs I have worked at want things produced faster, that saves way more money for a company than letting go of workers because they can get the product out to market faster. I imagine many companies will figure that out again, particularly when rates are reduced again.
Good insights! This may sound discouraging to some but I think AI has made web development IRREVERSIBLY too competitive for new people to get a corporate job. But at the same time it's much easier to start your own business, if you can think of a good product. As for jobs, there are now many more opportunities in robotics and AI from now on.
I go back and forth on that one a lot right now. I found using an LLM to really help on learning a new stack, eg I was doing some tests bridging some Rust and C lib and it was so much easier than trying to dig through eg broken/incoherent old StackOverflow posts. I *think* if someone just loves the space in 2024 I would say to learn Rust first (kind of how I did Pascal/C back in the day) and then HTML/SQL/CSS/TypeScript. So if you are a kid that would mean really leaning in on using an LLM to help you learn stuff. Then when you pop out of school you would be the LLM whisperer for all of the lower level stuff. One problem with all of this is trying to figure out what or where the AI will eventually plateau. If it doesn't that's... going to be tough.
@@ChangeNodeDo not focus on your experience - focus on the experience in a year or two, 2 models forward (i.e. GPT-2 level to GPT-4 in jump) and integrated into development environments. And then the next models are already in the works.
I think this take is pretty spot on. My gut feel is moving more towards devops/ data engineering roles will give more job security for your conventional full-stack / backend dev. I've had good jobs / 6 years exp, however, I do feel like my resume is a dime a dozen.
God. Maybe I need to look at a career change then lol. I find that stuff so mind numbing and boring. I’m already having to deal with lots more devops and terraform stuff than I ever wanted to at work
@@luke5100same here. I just want to give you my artifact, at most a docker container and im done. Leave me alone with all the other bs, is just want to develop the application...
Always good to see your videos, keep it up! 🙋♂️ Btw, are you currently seeking video editors or a thumbnail designer to enhance viewers, retention, or CTR? If yes, May I send you a previous work sample?
Im halfway through my SE bachelor's, and the industry has changes so much in the past 2 years that its scary! I have a couple more years left and on top of being concerned about if my skills are even gonna be needed in two years, so much has changed so fast to the point where i have absolutely no idea what the future brings!
Same here... Constantly wondering whether I should even continue working on the degree. Just a few years ago it was a no-brainer, but now I'm very concerned because of all the debt I'm taking on to get it. Feels like entry-level jobs for new grads are going to be extremely hard to get, due to the high CS/SE enrollment, outsourcing, and any further advances of AI in the next few years which might end up being able to replace the work of a lot of junior devs
I think the timing could work out great for you. At the moment, this is the peak of a correction while you are halfway through a course. I think the primary driver to this situation was the excessive hiring in 2020 to handle the huge increase in demand for online activity due to people at home with lockdowns; e.g. In April 2020, Amazon announced they were *hiring* 100,000 new employees. Apply that across Microsoft, Google, Cisco, etc. After the lockdown/restrictions were gradually lifted, this online demand returned more to normal, meaning so many of those jobs were unnecessary. So I see it effectively like a hiring pump & dump (2020 pump, 2023-2024 dump). The correction, happening right now, will comprise of people spreading out to other fields (mechanical, trade, commerce, retail, etc.), emigration and shift to entrepreneurship. By the time you get out of your university course, this will likely have settled down. Tech is not goin g away, in fact, quite the opposite. Look at the ongoing developments with CBDCs, tracking, surveillance, blockchain, tokenisation, AI, etc. Whether you want to be part of some of those areas ethically is another matter. But the investment will be there. As a tip, I've seen a major shift toward Python in recent years. Most jobs going now list Python over Java or other languages.
This is the perfect time to work on skill development. The jobs will come back eventually; focus on being prepared for when they do rather than stressing about how they’re not here right now.
This is all anyone can ever do. There will always be opportunities and no one doubts that tech is a huge part of the future. No one knows what or when the next opportunity will be. All we can do is prepare and be ready for when it arrives. Like the man said in this video, the buzz is around cloud computing, automated workflows, and robotics (driven by AI of course.) I know where I’m putting my study time.
After the corporate massive layoffs, I have defaulted on debts, my savings are lying waste to inflation and my portfolio losing gains everyday. It’s all leading to financial exhaustions and depression. These days I have contributed more in learning how to make extra interest on the side, Using my job to finance my goals, You can't be an employee forever!
ensure you add value to your life first not always to your employer, everyone is replaceable. I am always making sure of this to ensure my own sanity and future security.
Our way of life needs better alternative, but at the same time, people also need to be more responsible. I know for a fact that there's a lot of people that simply don't make enough, I make roughly hundred plus a year and in California, rent inflation alone eat up almost all of what I make, with dependents and other obligations included, it's easy to end up with zero.
Big ups to everyone working effortlessly trying to earn a living while building wealth even after the massive layoffs. My wife and I we are both retired with over $2 million in net worth and all paid off debts. living smart and frugal with our money, made it possible for us this early, even till now we earn passively with our asset coach. Adapt to a lifestyle, be thrifty, set a budget, save money and build more streams.
Impressive Joe Robert! having a great savings and more streams to earn makes life goal’s easier, I make most stock purchases when the market is in a confirmed uptrend or cheap cost, although most stocks I bought months ago which showed strong signs of doing well has greatly underperformed. It’s okay for me on the long run, however it’s a good time to add to existing holdings at follow -on opportunities.
Nah, 20 years ago when I was just starting as a software developer I already heard everyone is saying it's a dead end and we are going to be replaced by robots soon. A few years later everyone wanted to be a developer and even lame entered the field. I hope it will reduce even more so only interested and truly talented people stay.
Great video, glad this popped up on my feed! Appreciate the realistic perspective and the clear explanations. Would definitely like to see a video about strategies around building a safety net for dev careers moving forward (what tools to focus on, etc).
Did you see the vid on how to get a Java job? When I posted it I had less than 1k subs and they were 99% Java, but tbh 90%+ of the material is for any dev. Check it out and lmk thoughts...
Great advice. I've been programming for 2 years now, and I'll try and get a job as a programmer this year, but my medium to long term plan is to get an engineering degree, so that I can get into more advanced areas of tech, instead of relying merely on the coding market. Anyways, insights from experienced people like yourself are incredibly useful, so I subscribed. Thank you
Hmmm when I saw how many software engineering school there are in China and India 10 years ago, I decided to be a hardware engineer. Because software you just need a computer and there’s so much resource on how to program, it’s a fairly easy ramp up. And I guess looking back I was right, most people in my company are all H1B or working from their home country. The competition in the software engineering field is only going to get more intense. You might not get the high paid job from Google or meta that easily anymore, but there’s still opportunity in mid pay mid size or start up companies. Might have to just swallow our pride and adapt to whatever is hiring
Thanks for your insights, sir. I'm curious about your thoughts on emerging technologies like blockchain. It seems like the era of shallow tech is fading. I'm currently in college, took about four post-high school years exploring my interests. The tech space is where I want to be, but its unpredictability is discouraging. Would you recommend diving deep into the science, focusing on areas like blockchain for hands-on implementation of bridges and protocols? While it feels safer, I'm concerned about the potentially lengthy and challenging journey
Personally I'm not a fan of blockchain tech or crypto currencies. The best & worst part of tech is the rate of change. I have done Java since 1995 and it's almost totally transformed what and how it works numerous times. My suggestion would be to learn Rust, TypeScript/HTML/CSS, and SQL. If you want a real challenge, try building a desktop app with Tauri that talks to some lower level hardware thing and then stuffs that data into a database. If you can demo that and talk to it esp in a few years I think you would be in a pretty good spot. That's hardcore mode(tm) but I think a lot of potential employers would be pretty impressed.
@@ChangeNode Thank you very much for your response .....I bet the suggestions above set you up for a career in deep tech ....like you will be well prepared for it
It's time to get in the data/agents/systems space. p.s : what would you want to buy? a prefab house for disgruntled urban person or a GPU cluster at the same land?
Never watched you before but your history lesson is exactly what I experienced and can verify as true. Graduated with a BS in CS in the late 90's and was the first group of folks in the new 'Software Development in Test' team... All the manual testers were invited but most didn't want anything to do with automation. Guess who was laid off first? I see the parallels with AI today. You have two choices - become a master of AI - or get replaced by it. It's really that simple.
Just found your channel. Dpoken like a true tech sage. Just thinking about Tech product & Tech project management jobs and how all this will change will software engineer, devops jobs shrinking?
I think it takes 5 years to become competent in programming. But this I mean being able to take existing code and not break it and improve it. With the progress of AI. It is my opinion that if your not already in the game you might be better looking at a trades job. I'm a 30 year senior software developer working for big data AI company. So I have a little experience here. But if you still want to become a programmer learn how to leverage AI in your work for now so when it replaces you, you will be able to use it to your advantage.
manufacturing systems engineer self teaching for a career switch into software. Think I'll study more on dark factories and IoT software. Sounds more practical than a uber clone.
Graduated in ‘22, got my first tech job, ready to start building my IT career Got let go, almost got evicted, had to go back to working at a security guard and doing graveyard shifts in ‘23 and current Oh I’m living the dream
Great thoughts and advice. I've been doing this work since the early nineties too. This I.T. downturn definitely feels a little different to me. I don't want to alarm people, but calm yet brutally honest thinking is needed now.
Yeah. Very hard trying to strike balance between “here is the info” and “egad this could get bad.” Hope for best, plan for worst, try to stick with “cautious optimism”
I know this isn’t the main point of the video but it’s something that needs clarification: the housing crisis in America or Canada has nothing to do with amount of houses built or how much it costs to build one. It’s because of real estate speculation. So I’m afraid that building more houses won’t solve the issue, because there are already plenty of houses out there or even pretty much empty buildings that could be converted into apartments. In other words, it’s a project!
Oh, it's a hugely complex area. Real estate speculation. Need for folks to be close to jobs driving up costs for specific locations. Private equity appears to be a new one. There's also data showing that at least in the US there's some multiple of the number of homes needed sitting empty as second homes/vacation homes/etc. Where I am (Seattle) even though rates went up there's no inventory and so the $ keep going up. In theory if the costs for the construction dropped at least folks could build on empty and/or redo existing for a lot less $. Housing could easily be a whole video/series...
hey, realy good video, it's nearly the impossible to predict future (a fully), but i think all of us agree with the market is shrinking and gets shrinks more if you are neratively early age of your career (like 0 - 5 years), what is your best action to do you do rigth now? (specially like more traditional position, like web developer)
If you have a job then keep on doing it. The next investment cycle will begin soon. If you don’t have a job then reskill and don’t be proud about your skill set. Eg if you are a backend dev then look at data engineering, if you are front end maybe look at ai tools and services and how to incorporate those into user experiences. A big difference between the robotics jobs and software jobs is how location bound they are. I think jobs will be more location bound in the future so prepare your life so that you can move across the country or even between countries. I’m an older worker and I have been through many boom busts and personally my greatest takeaway is to always try to be where it happens, and then find my own angle to it. I started in qa during the mobile boom, went to analytics when ai boom started and now I’m in data engineering.
@@sxxon751 When making those shifts in tech area, did you find yourself coming in on a lower pay than people with more years in that particular area, despite similar total years of exp?
Been in tech since 1999 and was recently laid off. It’s nice to see someone with a different perspective on the current market besides a bunch of kids yelling and complaining into a camera. Subscribed!
i don’t think you understand how technology works really. You think these tools such as no code etc just exist without engineers? All of the things you mention are developed by engineers including software engineers lol. Its just the needs are being shifted towards some other technologies as it has been since hundred of years
Great video! Sounds like you've seen a lot happen over the long term. But just yesterday Cognition just came out with an AI named Devin, Cognition's AI software engineer that can write, debug and deploy code to create functioning websites and videos. Man, now I feel like this REALLY changes the game... a lot. (Never thought things would move THIS fast and now here I am pivoting AGAIN??!). What are your thoughts on this new development?
Put in a request for Devin access, curious to see. FWIW there have been some very interesting CLI LLM tools that do some of that, tho Devin does look slick. But AFAIK you still will need a dev minder. IIRC Devin has a very curious 13% stat on it. Had like five people ask about this in the last few hours, if I get access I'll do a vid on it. Hmm.
I wouldn’t bet on it. Furthermore, it’s still cheaper to outsource to India and now Eastern Europe. We hit the peak in 2020-2021 for the US market. Shareholders and executives have finally found a better cost cutting measure by just outsourcing. I mean paying 6 figure salaries to thousands of employees is unsustainable and ludicrous when you think about it from a high level business perspective.
Jobs will come back but it won't be exactly the roles we saw up until now. And it won't be the same gold rush. When I started my career as a frontend dev it was just at the cusp when making sites for small businesses was a viable career and small agencies were raking in cash. Sucks to miss out on cushy jobs like that but that's life. I was also too junior to rake in cash on the app trend. We'll just have to wait and see what the next area will be where companies start dumping their money into when investments start up again and hopefully pivot in time. I feel sorry for juniors who are looking for their first job though. I suspect a lot will try to find some other career and never get off the ground while we wait. Even with 9+ years of experienc, leading projects, deploying big apps and good references from past jobs, the rate of responses for jobs is very low.
Housing in the bay area is still surging & you need to make 6 figures to even think about a lease. We're nowhere close to a 2001 crash. 1 artifact of our inflation targeting system is salaries don't go down but housing prices rise a lot faster during times of surplus labor.
At least in Seattle there's just flat no inventory as everyone who has a ~3% loan and equity is more or less locked in. No inventory -> prices stay pretty high. I'm not sure how bad things would have to get for the market to actually crash (eg if housing dropped 30-50%) and I'm not sure I want to find out. Been going through some stuff on economics in Japan/Tokyo and I think that might be a comparable model for how the next few decades will go
Yeah, problem is employers looking for ONE person who can manage what a whole IT department usually handles. They fight over the the few ppl who have 15+ xp and know python, js, ts, php AND C# . Plus SQL, AWS and react/vue/angular/Ruby on senior lvl of course!!!
It's not all AI ... yet. I work at a big corp and the amount of hiring we did in 2021 and first part of 2022 was insane. We use AI tools, but it's not replacing anyone yet. In fact, there was an issue with people not knowing what they were doing just pitting in AI generated code that caused more issues that had to be resolved, and probably will be dealing with that for a bit of time yet. Maybe less of a need to hire some JR people, but at this point, there is no need to hire anyone else because people can just be shuffled from different departments.
current generation of LLM-based AI is such a meme, funny that your company was naive enough to start using it for real. Normally you use AI just to get easy VC money while the AI hype is still there, not because it is actually useful or improves your productivity
I started out in the 1980s developing assembly language for telecoms equipment before moving on to C, C++, C# and any other language that came along. After 4 decades I'm still making hardware work in a variety of sectors from defense to medical devices to robotics and consumer products. The whole web thing passed me by and I've never been out of highly paid work. Domain knowledge is far more important than implementation detail sense .I remember punched cards.
Awesome. The first machine I got to use was a Commodore PET w/a cassette tape drive, and my formative teenage years I had an Apple //c. Thinking of calling it at some point, or going to keep going...?
@@ChangeNode I like doing what I do. I don't need to but I don't know what I'd do if I stopped. I've never been one for golf or fishing and half the people I know who've retired had a heart attack within a year.
@@peterd788 Oof, yeah. Figuring out how to reengage with life outside of work is a whole thing. My grandmother turns 100 in August and talking to her over the last twenty years has been very eye-opening about the challenges of aging. She's still sharp as a tack, I only hope that I'm in as good a condition even in my 80s. I turned 50 recently and I got this poster shop-us.kurzgesagt.org/collections/infographic-posters/products/lifespan-timeline-poster?_pos=2&_fid=89d8e62ac&_ss=c&variant=39451591770160 The poster has been weirdly clarifying and induces a sense of calm in me, but it stresses my wife out so it's hung behind the door to my office lol.
bootcamps are killing the job opportunities to, they are willing to work for way cheaper than a cs degree as junior and are bombarding the jobs offers, i don't know were this idea came from than you can be.a software engener in 6months bootcamp when you were working a classic job before that , i mean there is no other engeners branches with '6monts bootcamp be a 6figures from bali' (sry my english isn't my first langage)
because most coding jobs really don't need you to be a CS major to do them. You don't need a CS degree to make a website or even an app. You DO need a CS degree to go into ML, AI, robotics, cyber security, probably data science & other advanced fields.
I’m in tech, software developer, I’ve gotten two job offers in the past 2 months with well known companies. What they liked was that I was technical and extroverted. I can talk about code and I can, in their opinion still write okay code. The market is getting extremely competitive. I think the days of checking in, siting behind our screens writing code, and then checking out is over. Work in those soft skills! I personally can’t wait to see more jobs automated.
RE: the job offers, that's awesome! From what I can tell, the extroverted technical person is quite rare. When I was in high school I split my time between tech/nerd stuff and drama/improv which was (and still is) extremely rare. I have seen data that says that a huge percentage of the population rates "fear of public speaking" above death(!).
@@ChangeNodeI’m a huge advocate for drama/improv and theater. My brother was in theater, and I loved watching him. He later became a litigator, and does quite well for himself. I can definitely tell you’re a great orator. Very structured and expressive talks on here. Looking forward to see more content.
I think it comes down to not just following the money is there. So many kids studied CS just because they were told they can make a lot of money, but had no enjoyment. Now Devs and "nerds" that really loved it and speak code and are having a field day because the talent is so far above. Instead of chasing the market, become great at something you choose to enjoy and the money will follow.
Yeah, what I've been telling folks in other comments is to imagine if that $150k job is now a $120k or $80k job. Would they still do it? Also to make sure they have at least some of idea of a backup. It's rough tho no matter what.
I don’t see anything wrong with selecting a degree that “promises” financial stability. In fact it should be encouraged. Furthermore, just because you love something doesn’t mean you’ll be able to support yourself, let alone a family (see artists). IMO, what we’re experiencing is late stage capitalism. Corporations have become so large and powerful that they pretty much own governments. This puts all the leverage into the hands of a very small group of people and none to the masses.
Pool of cs talent won’t shrink. Coastal states are full of Indian/chinese CS grads on h1-b visas that were imported into the US with the express intention of filling gaps in the job market and dropping the average salary for programmers. Any demand not being met by domestic supply will be filled by international supply
I am in test automation, I used to do a lot of coding, but now I see a lot of websites where you can automate your test requirements without any traditional coding. Every manager in my organization wants AI.
So true, I see the push into less code, even with traditional mobile space few years ago my country was dominated by native dev jobs now? 60% is react native, 30 flutter, and 10% only native either one. I feel that with enough time flutter flow will steal a bit piece of the market. Software development is a complex process, the more complexity you add the more risk of errors. So if I can achieve something with less and be "good enough" why should I work my a** off? I can create a landing page on my own but why If I do it with Webflow x times quicker? Most people forget that software is for solving problems the end goal is what counts not the route of delivery. And guess what, most people who make decisions aren't technical experts they look at numbers and software produced by low/no code that output 80% of the result and cost 10 times less or more just says a compelling story. I still think that current landscape will be going more and more into infrastructure maintenance. Cloud or on premise.for me it is time upskilling in this area and start offering services as a business.
I've been following VR since Oculus DK1-2 days. I still think about the huge "how to make people not throw up" document in the SDK. Have a Q3 and love it, but mostly use it for exercise.
I am In XR/VR space for 7+ years now. I think it will be a 3-5 more years till it becomes a mass market device with gaming and enterprise being the main markets for XR/VR. Still lots of optical and cost challenges to make things small enough to replace your phone. We are in death valley in tech. this is where all the inefficient unprofitable companies are going to die, investment is going to get more focused, and reduce the noise for consumers. With Moore's Law dead efficiency and application is the big focus.
I'm so happy I made productive decisions about my finances that changed my life forever,hoping to retire next year.. Investment should always be on any creative man's heart for success in life
I'll advise you to work with a financial advisor.....Building a good investment portfolio is more complex so I would recommend you seek Fergus Waylen's support. This way you can get strategies designed to address your unique long/short-term goals and financial dreams .
YES! that's exactly his name (Mr Fergus Waylen) I watched his interview on CNN News and so many people recommended highly about him and his trading skills, he's an expert and I'm just starting with him....From Brisbane Australia
After completing two popular udemy courses and one website bootcamp, I've decided to try college. I figure it might take 2-4 years for the tech market to rebound anyway. And hopefully I'll be in a position to intern or get a job in 2+ years even if it's not a tech job.
That's awesome! My two cents - to really get your money out of college, make sure you network, do internships, etc. You can learn a ton w/o going to college in terms of skills, but the college $ buys you networking opportunities. Also try to think of it not just as tech but also at least one domain to fold in (eg retail, or medicine, or automotive, or whatever). That way you can pivot much more easily, just in case, plus it'll make it dead easy to get a job in that field later.
I am a self-taught software engineer with 11 YOE. I quit my job as a lead SWE for a medical device company two years ago to build an AI product that didn't end up working out. Now I can't find a job. Everything is scarce and highly specialized, and when I find an opportunity, I am denied due to a lack of a degree. I am starting university this summer to be a mechanical engineer to serve our future robot overlords. Just thought I'd add my 2 cents to the hat.
Right now, I have a SWE job in a government owned company in my country. I've been researching quite a bit as to inform myself in taking the next step for my career. I graduated in 2021, my major question right now, is if I stick it out in my current company or if I take the leap of faith. Even though I am heavily inclined to stick it out. It's also a major factor in my decision the fact that employees in government owned companies don't get fired whatsoever, this is particularly important for me. In two of my job applications the companies either froze hiring or began laying off right after my application. Of course, I didn't get any of these jobs but I'm honestly glad I didn't.
Yeah, FWIW obviously esp in this market make sure you have a solid job in hand before quitting. Beyond that it's the usual, fill out your skill set, etc. Did you check out my other vid on Java jobs? If you are an SWE probably most of it would still be helpful/interesting even if you aren't Java...
One thing about no code/low code platforms is that apps can quickly become very complex and need software development principles applied. These apps still need good developers behind them to really succeed. I've worked with a low code platform for 3 years. I think these platforms can work great in certain industries and certain app types but I can't see them taking over software development as a whole.
Yeah, just needs to affect, say, 20% to have a big impact on salaries/etc. I agree not all, but I just spent some time begrudgingly going through some Bubble stuff and it does an awful lot. I don't know that I would want to build/maintain it but ... sigh.
Most low code tools are an inferior way to code. Ironically, they actually have more code because you're coupling your implementation to someone else's system
Yeah I actually worked as a bubble dev for a while and there were tons of situations that required me writing JS to circumvent limitations. Its a powerful tool, but it does have a lot of drawbacks. big ones are price of scaling your app and slow queries on large databases.
@@fernandomarturet2486 the db is postrgres underneath from what I can tell. Did you try using an external data source eg Supabase or Amazon Aurora and/or REST services to help w/scaling & costs? Any other drawbacks you've run into?
A lot of them aren't coming back. The companies I worked with last few years are moving a lot of jobs overseas and investing heavily in automation (not AI regular automation).
RE the automation, I keep coming back to a terminology thing. Industrial robotics have been a thing for a long time, adding in ML/LLM stuff seems like it will make those better. Does that count as AI robotics? I think so, but unclear as to impact in the real world...
@@ChangeNode What I've seen is all the talk of AI made executives finally believe automation is possible and they are investing resources into it in a way they weren't three years ago. The last company I worked for got rid of all of operations, most of QA, and most installers. Non-AI Software does those jobs now and those jobs are gone for good. Yes they have folks building that software but it's way fewer folks. Most of us aren't irreplaceable geniuses our careers exist between little inefficiencies that are being eliminated with automation and big data.
So it might happen, that many people with ideas will build quick MVPs with no-code tools and AI, and then hit a road block when they would like to scale and add more advanced features. In consequence there will be more businesses on the market that already started, but to grow they need to hire someone to either rewrtie the stuff completely or somehow manage this cookie-cutter AI codebase. But I'm not sure if it will outweigh previous shrinking of jobs
There are actually enough jobs for 90% of cs grads, BS and MS combined, assuming the bottom 10% are not good enough for the job and just got the degree through a mill. It really is more of a factor of companies reversing the decision to allow boot-campers and degreeless people into these positions. Unfortunately, the economy has to be crap for about 2-3 years to scare off all the "in-it-for-the-money" type people and then the market could come back to "normal" times. Also, as a side note, I've noticed a pattern. Almost all consultancy type high level people continue to say that AI will replace people and it'll come crashing down (saying that also gets them that big money investor greenbacks). Yet, a lot of experience developers who actually write code everyday who have tried AI will tell you that programmers are here to stay, just that what they do will change slightly.
They aren’t wrong though. There will be jobs for experienced developers but AI will take a lot of entry level developer positions making it harder for newbies to enter the field. Why hire a newbie who could be a liability to do repetitive tasks when AI can do it decently for pennies on the dollar.
@@MutedMinimalist what's interesting about this is that I'm also seeing a lot of folks esp kind of saying that it's the opposite - that the junior folks are much more productive when paired with an AI. FWIW my son is quite happy learning with an AI partner (we did Unity last summer and Godot this year). Also lots of senior devs saying that they are cleaning up a lot more junk code from juniors copy/pasting. Dunno how it's all going to shake out.
Yeah, that's part of why I put the AWS chart in to kind of highlight how much AWS etc are going to try to eat everything. Going to try to use AI to automate as much of the cloud mgmt etc etc etc. Even if the AI stuff isn't all there yet/requires humans to click "approve" still going to try to integrate as much as possible
From my perspective, I love engineering and especially software engineering (swe). So, until I can do what I love and solve technical problems, I don’t care if it’s AI, embedded, robotics, or any other industry. Give me a problem; I will manage it. Because I invested more in problem-solving rather than in a particular tech stack/programming language and am always willing to learn new things, I hope I will be okay and happy. By the way, I have an EE degree, worked in embedded, and currently at Abbott, doing some 3D graphics and software for the doctors. So my professional exp is mostly software.
@@adamconrad5249 you know, I literally just realized that there are two very different ways to read that quote. I mean, I've been hearing that phrase my whole life and I just realized that. 🤣
I am in full stack java. But I feel like getting more aws knowledge in ML engineer track. In the meantime, I got aws related work content. Before I paid more attention to AI trends, I felt something different when i tried to apply for jobs, etc, and I wanted to know what was going on now. I feel a little panicking. The world has evolved so quickly.
FWIW it's almost impossible to keep up with the rate of change right now. I mean, there are channels that do nothing but report on AI/robotics advancements every day all day. My two cents - keep up a relatively high focus on learning/flexibility. If work is spending $ on you learning that's fantastic. AWS & full stack & domain expertise FTW. Also FWIW don't forget to have at least 2-3 recruiters you touch base every few months.
Like AI growing there would be jobs like AI development. Required sets to make your AI model advanced and coding related to the same stuff. Website will be no more but there would be apps driving businesses. Offline stuff become more entertainment oriented and online dependency will increase. Less jobs will be there as AI tool will manage product development and people will choose basic employment stuff like own small businesses. God is feeding us, for sure he has some plans.
That was a scary book. CASE turned into little more than “learn an IDE”, though. Unfortunately, offshoring still took off, but so did cleaning up after it 😁
As somebody, whom has to sieve through the tons and tons of applications from script kiddies, whom are used to earning big buckfor playing with a few APIs for some meabingless apps, I have a question when will the good developers will come back into mainstream?! Messy code, no documentation, short attention span.... Our company IS in hardware development. Finding a good firmware, or embedded eystems dev is near impossible. Then you do start looking into alternatives.
