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...
With the rise in AI as a tool for every single tech company, what skills would the future sales engineer require? Who is selling products, and what products will be sold in tech?
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
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
If it’s any consolation, same, but I’ve been in tech for 10 years now. This security job is fucking crushing my soul knowing what I used to do just four months ago.
@@BLKM4NTI5 To be honest, I think IT in the US is done. It's no longer a stable career unless you work for the government and are protected by a security clearance. And even the clearance only goes so far. I've got a friend who is out of work and still has an active clearance. I'm switching my career into something that can't be outsourced to India. I got my CDL and now driving flatbed trucks part time. It pays the bills for now so I'm thankful.
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.
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. ;)
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.
The idea is if you have 6 months worth of expenses in cash then even if the market is down you have cash. Generally it’s risky to sell off a lot of investments in a short period of time so once someone is laid off if they don’t have a job immediately lined up they may want to start selling off investments slowly in advanced of depleting that 6 month emergency fund.
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.
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?
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 TH-cam and keep it under ten minutes. 😬🤷♂
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.
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
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.
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.
@@npc7679 Certificates in products and a bit of luck if I am honest. I will provide a short description that's not in depth of what I am currently doing although it doesn't count for everything that I do. Work with presales and closely with sales teams in support of generating new business revenues. Understanding the business challenges at prospect organizations and the functional and technical fit. Demo and workshops for customers or potential customers. Collaborate with product development organization to continue to develop the services. (In some cases we build the solution from scratch)
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 graduated as a fullstack javascript developer last summer. And everyone is saying you should learn and study something else now and every tech is getting laid off. I mean where does it end, i feel like you need to study, learn and upgrade all the time and so much and so fast that you don't even have the time to work and apply what you learned in the first place.
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.
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
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.
@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...
@@angelsub9184 I think general software engineering is still a safe bet overall, but do yourself a giant favor and add Backend programming, CI/CD, Devops, pipelines to your skill set. I didn't and I am less competitive on the job market as a result.
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
That's what I've noticed. Just got AZ-900 cert for cloud, working on an admin cert, and every job is asking for 10+ years of experience and a totally comprehensive service delivery and management package. And there were still like 45 applicants for every job. I didn't stand a chance.
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.
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.
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.
been watching similar videos for almost 4 hours now, and you're the first one that's got it the closest. I'm a business system analyst, and want to stay relevant, so I need to figure out how to drive forward with the current tools so I can try to stay ahead and not fall behind. i thought the future would be 3D Visio and 3D Excel, but now I'm sure it's something I haven't even thought of.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Protect yourself against your job, Run a side business or contribute to an open earning project streamline that is unrelated to your day job, that way you develop an independent skill against layoffs.
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!
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
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.
Great video. I heard about an upcoming doctor shortage, yet medical schools still strongly limit how many MDs graduate a year. I used to think this was stupid but now I realize they were artificially limiting supply of doctors to keep their jobs and prestige 💀 Software development is the opposite… 0 barriers to entry + boot camps and oversaturated supply lead to the current problem.
Yeah, different fields come to different places for different reasons. I think that some of the doctor stuff comes from wanting to protect the field from quacks, but it's also very clearly more like an old school guild system in a lot of ways. I read that the guy that invented the whole "work insane shifts for training" thing was lit up like crazy on cocaine, which tbh tracks. Sigh.
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!!!
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
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
@@asdf8948 I agree and disagree. On one hand, having very good technical skills is a big plus, but I've learned the hard way that being good still isn't enough. I'm in the top 1% of competitive programming, worked at FAANG, built my own startups, worked at series A startups, etc. I breeze through the technical rounds and "just know" how to do it. I can't explain how my brain just "knows" it, but I've been writing code for almost 20 years now and am self-taught (I'm not trying to show off or sound arrogant, but this is meant to add context and some validity to my comment). Believe it or not, this just isn't enough. I'm also AuADHD and even though I finish the technical problems early and chat with the interviewer for the remaining time, this sometimes gives the interviewer a weird feeling, and I'll usually make it to the final rounds without issues. I've been rejected after talking to interviewers in a positive way and even get feedback from other NT friends on how they think it went. Overall, I might be very good at tech, and can communicate it very well, as well as articulate the tradeoffs between multiple solutions, but I still get rejected very often due to the fact people just don't want me due to my social skills (which are below average, yes, but I consistently cheer others up and make sure to collaborate and offer help. Overall trying to be a team player). I love to share my passion for this field and teach others (I was also a mentor for many years to CS students) and I still get filtered out on things like "Firm handshakes" & "What's your favorite sports team?". How do I know this? Technically, I never will, because that would be grounds for a lawsuit lol. But, from the sheer number of interviews and pass rates, as well as people I've talked to who can give me an NT perspective makes this very obvious.
@@asdf8948 The problem is because the standards is so low, companies can no longer tell who are good candidates. Everyone got python certificate, grinding leetcodes, went through 1000hrs of coding camp, with CS degree, and they all be passing tech coding interviews. Then what else can you do to filter people out? We got 50-60k unemployed software engineers in the bay area alone, with only 5k-6k job openings. Meaning you're competing against 9 other people plus god knows how many engineers in india and china waiting to come over. Maybe 40-50 candidates for every 1 job. -.- It's getting tougher and tougher since 3 month ago.
There are no tech jobs in India as well, many employees are forced to resign. We are in a similar situation worldwide. Same thing happening in China, malaysia, Phillipines and poland too
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...
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.
Hi, I hope that you don't mind taking some time to answer my question. My translation/graphic design gig got automated recently. I'm left questioning a lot of things, and I'm really interested in software engineering as that's something I always wanted to do, but life and opportunities took me in another direction. How would I be able to use the AI to my advantage if it replaced me, if I was a software engineer?
I have been doing QA for over 20 years and there was a time when QA needed to make a decision. Learn how to manage people, or learn how to code. I went the management route and then never really had time to learn to code until it became required in order to maintain automated tests. Now I'm looking for QA Management jobs but without the coding skills to create and maintain an automation framework (which I probably would not actually be doing) all my QA experience is worthless. Moral of the story? Not sure. I got a week left of my unemployment so I guess I'll try to learn how to make fries.
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
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’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.
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.
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
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.
Sadly i graduated in 2019 and due to family things, i gave up my opportunities to help them out more because i couldnt watch my mom deal with my dad's health problems alone. Fast forward to 2024 and my dad passed away and tech job market isnt good to get started. I dont regret my choice though.
I'm so sorry. My dad died right after I turned 18 and tbh I was still processing aspects for decades. I am so grateful to be around for my son now. Every minute a treasure. Good luck and all the best.
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
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.
Those who say human creativity will be squelched by whatever these algorithms entail do not understand or value creativity. I am looking forward to seeing what happens to the first company to go all in on the current generation AI.
Creativity and problem solving skills will be always in demand, that's what AI can't do. But you'll always need to know your field. Needed knowledge shifts from depth to width, that's it.
Also the question, if every company goes dark factory, full of robots and AI buit apps, who will buy your products? Everyone will be poor because no job.
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.
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?
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
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 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.
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”
The problem with most of us is we are looking for a comfy job at a fancy company making 6 figures. No one talks about this but if you start helping small businesses with technology you could be making a LOT of cash. You just need to get out of the mindset of I can only code in X or be a tiny cog in a huge company in order to make money. Think about business automation and how to help small businesses with tech that will actually move the needle for them
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.
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?
I know this channel is focused on developers, I'm in the 'data science' route and have always worked closely with true developers and held much respect for them. 29 year old with 8 years of experience in IT from helpdesk to SQL Administration to IT Manager who lead several CRM app development projects (~200 employee company). Just finished a Masters in Data Science and feel like I'm obsolete and walking into a barren desert of zero opportunity.
@@ChangeNode ML stuff from the 2015s. It covered Random Forest, MLR, SVMs, Log Reg, NNets. It didn't get into RNNs, CNNs, GANs, Stable Diffusion, Transformers. Im doing those on my own best I can. You may consider those AI rather than Data Science, which is probably the accepted categorization, but there aren't really job openings for the ones I covered. Didn't touch Keras/Tensor/PyTorch. Again doing those on my own. Most positions want 5+ years of experience with a specific model type so I'm not sure it really would've mattered. Thoughts? Bad choice of program?
@@crossfire340 Yeah, superficially it looks good but I agree the hotness now is more modern stuff. WRT experience it's like that all around, everyone needs 3-5 but nobody wants to train/ramp/etc. Similar to the rest of the advice - add a domain, portfolio, have to network, maybe present at a user group etc. Firing off resumes online has from what I can tell a 1% or lower inquiry-to-job rate regardless. Heck I think it's less than 5% even getting back an acknowledgement of receipt.
@@ChangeNode Thanks for the reply. Will be trying to twist my capstone project into utilizing PyTorch in a multi model architecture with an LSTM + Log Reg model to start touching the new hotness (mainly getting accustomed to pytorch)
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.
I want people, especially experienced, to understand that people looking into the market now, not to change jobs but to GET a first job, especially people that are starting maybe a Computer Science or Engineering degree: they are not looking at 1, 2, 5 years. When you say "don't worry it's gonna take 10 years for a lot of these jobs to start to disappear, what you're saying is "if you study 4-5 years, you have 5-6 of work before you have to accept you wasted 10 years of your life and maybe can't even transfer those skills"
Yeah, depends on the target job. Front end only JS web dev vs say driver dev are very different. Not sure how the specialist vs generalist stuff will pan out in particular 🤔
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.
A little pessimistic approach but valid points. Robotics is hard. So If you are under 30 years old, you must start to lean towards robotics. Considering with Starlink, robotics and IoT will be every open field you can even think. Farming, travelling, autonomous vehicles, remote construction operators etc... Data science has limited seats, plus it can be done by AI way easier than SW. It has been around some time. Also I believe LLMs requires a lot of capital before even be a product. Plus AI market is "winner takes all" market. Whoever comes with AGI first, the game is over. It'll be next giga success. As someone who lives in Europe, knowing some domain information,I'll rely on fintech dinasours to not wanting to change their tech stack anytime soon, until always when it is too late.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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
honestly, this point - and likely most points in the future- electrical engineering is a more nimble degree to get. gives you the fundamentals to break into all of the other sides of software theoretically - then the practice of code is just practice.
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
Thank the Goddess I am a Principals Engineer with 27 years of very diverse experience from ETLs, Cloud, and architecture. It would be near impossible to be starting now.
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.
Robotics is going to be the next huge thing. It's a gigantic field of opportunities - there are so many things that can be automated! I don't think software engineering is going away. I think it's getting transformed. If you are a web dev, the demand for coding there will go down. Invest in learning how to tinker with hardware, doing embedded coding, small automation projects. It will pay off in the long run
That’s not true. People use software for everything but you’re right that only a few big players have imprinted themselves into everything and then there are millions of small businesses relying on them. Places like Intel, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple are major players in everything from cloud services, processors, OSes, Gaming, phones, Web, streaming, etc. In essence, it’s oligopololized.
It’s just weird to see small businesses following the same process as FAANG to hire engineers. Even if you find an engineer who passes all leet code style tests, passes behavioral tests and 2/3 more random interviews. If that engineer is really that good, why would he waste his talent there? It’s exactly what I’m noticing right now. Rockstars are leaving within 6 months of employment and the company is struggling to fill a position that can be easily done by a mid level engineer with just basic programming experience.
Non-technical people hiring technical people is always a challenge. I've noticed this as a big problem for at least the last ten years or so. A lot of the small businesses seem to hire talent based on resume w/o knowing what they are even hiring. Strange days.
I would also add that many people are getting laid off because work is going offshore. So even if there is an up tick in the macroeconomic conditions, there is an increasing appetite for employing people in cheaper geographies. And as for AI, who knows how many jobs will be available?
Offshore is an excellent model for how the AI stuff may unfold. Both involve people getting laid off for cheaper options. The interesting thing is that IMHO globalization is on a downward trend at the same time as the AI/robotics/automated manufacturing stuff is picking up. Interesting times and all that.
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?
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.
I am both an Electrical Engineer and Software Engineer, have experience in both but currently doing Software. I am thinking of transitioning back to Electrical but i really did enjoy Software while it lasted.
NEVER. I’ve worked in silicon valley type companies 60% of people in the building are doing NOTHING for 90% of the day, its time to end this over reliance on computers
I'm wary but I still feel relatively safe. I graduated in 2020 and there were barely any job postings then. Took a beneath the average starting pay programming job just cause I was happy to be offered something. I'm still with them because it feels stable and I'm afraid to make a move somewhere just to be laid off. It's steady, slow moving business software in an old language. But it's still been a solid learning experience, lots of practical knowledge that wasn't covered deeply enough in college. Many people would probably find it boring or scoff at the pay (it's not low, just low for SE) but we haven't had a single layoff yet. We have an AI tool that got introduced recently but I'm not sure how useful it will be. It was getting a lot of things about both our front end and back end language completely wrong, I haven't played with it too much yet though.
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.
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...
Capital borrowing costs have more than tripled because as boomers moved into retirement most moved away from higher risk investments for T bills, bonds, and low risk investments. That’s over 6 trillion wiped off the market making it more competitive to secure investments. It is not an interest rate issue.
Ooh, Peter Ziehan fan? Yeah, I don't know exactly how to tease apart the investing mix, the rates, and all the rest of it. I'm noticing the huge amounts moving into AI and robotics vs traditional software plays. I'm a bit skeptical that boomers rebalancing portfolios are the main driver for a variety of reasons. Any good data sources on this stuff beyond FRED stuff?
Software engineering requires constant learning outside of work. Its the only way to keep up is to learn something that is used and hot in the market to some extent
What should my next video be about?
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.
remote software developer jobs in US for people outside US.java developer.Thank you
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...
With the rise in AI as a tool for every single tech company, what skills would the future sales engineer require? Who is selling products, and what products will be sold in tech?
Imagine being a programmer in the 90s and writing html and making big bucks lol
if you made big bucks in the 90s you probably worked with C , C++ , but html was ok too
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.
There was only about 20 guys doing them in 1993
And 19 of them were at CERN
Perl CGI-BIN scripts were a big deal!
Hearing about that is what got me to study programming in the first place 😂
refreshing to finally see someone who acts and talks like an adult regarding this subject
I know, right? It's SHOCKING!
It's shocking because he's intelligent , not everyone who can code is truly intelligent.
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
@@Zuranthus That isn't true at all. Nearly every trade has huge demand.
@@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
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
Same but it was 10 months ago and I’m frying chicken with a degree in Computer Science
You guys are trolling
@@KitingDev Sadly this is happening. Especially to native US worker who are losing their jobs to foreign workers overseas and h1b
If it’s any consolation, same, but I’ve been in tech for 10 years now. This security job is fucking crushing my soul knowing what I used to do just four months ago.
@@BLKM4NTI5 To be honest, I think IT in the US is done. It's no longer a stable career unless you work for the government and are protected by a security clearance. And even the clearance only goes so far. I've got a friend who is out of work and still has an active clearance.
I'm switching my career into something that can't be outsourced to India. I got my CDL and now driving flatbed trucks part time. It pays the bills for now so I'm thankful.
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.
dont accept shitty jobs like that
@@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.
@@buc991 yeah I see that. but why don't you move to more affordable country then?
@@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.
What another career?
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. ;)
At this point ,Every junior developer needs to build a product and ultimately become an entrepreneur...
that's actually how you get in front of all the applicants, have a big project, hobby or commercial, in your resume.
@@kishirisu1268 how do you do that without a job dummy
Delusional.
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.
OR change this garbage profession
People always say emergency fund of 6 months…yeah that’s not enough in times like these
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.
@@ericandbeethoven FTE jobs aren’t even considered to be long term anymore
@@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.
The idea is if you have 6 months worth of expenses in cash then even if the market is down you have cash. Generally it’s risky to sell off a lot of investments in a short period of time so once someone is laid off if they don’t have a job immediately lined up they may want to start selling off investments slowly in advanced of depleting that 6 month emergency fund.
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 🤷♂️
Electrician and/or HVAC.
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.
7:10 there are examples of such solutions and they are decades old such as sap
As a new grad struggling to find a job, this video feels so grim. I appreciate the reality check though, thank you for your insight.
What are we gonna do mate ?
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?
@@chickenbroski99average time to get a job is 18 months
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.
You said it perfectly
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 TH-cam and keep it under ten minutes. 😬🤷♂
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.
@@doublereedkurt1 Also with auto makers, the reason was a lot of jobs went abroad or the companies just lost the market so there was less need.
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
Correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t there enough material in udemy?
Or are the material in udemy also outdated?
It doesn’t matter whether or not the material is outdated. One simply cannot keep up with the ever-changing tech landscape.
I am utterly exhausted from trying to keep up with the arbitrary changes and updates. It’s just one framework to the next to the next.
@@Math-Tulane lol I have no money for paid courses. Still unemployed here.
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.
Easier said when no one is dependent on your ability to provide.
@@isanyoneelseheretoday Thats why you need to save 6 salaries and have them as buffer... Instead of wasting all of your salary every month..
They wont come back
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.
No employeer gives a crap about your studies, stop wasting your time @@stillmattwest
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.
How did you get a job as a solution architecture?
What skill do you have
@@npc7679 Certificates in products and a bit of luck if I am honest. I will provide a short description that's not in depth of what I am currently doing although it doesn't count for everything that I do.
Work with presales and closely with sales teams in support of generating new business revenues.
Understanding the business challenges at prospect organizations and the functional and technical fit.
Demo and workshops for customers or potential customers.
Collaborate with product development organization to continue to develop the services. (In some cases we build the solution from scratch)
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 graduated as a fullstack javascript developer last summer. And everyone is saying you should learn and study something else now and every tech is getting laid off. I mean where does it end, i feel like you need to study, learn and upgrade all the time and so much and so fast that you don't even have the time to work and apply what you learned in the first place.
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.
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
@@dallysinghson5569 Exactly, we are heading for a cliff.
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.
@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...
from the job postings I've seen, backend is still strong but devops/data engineering is stronger.
@@junicornplays980what about software engineering? Is it still safe?
@@angelsub9184 I think general software engineering is still a safe bet overall, but do yourself a giant favor and add Backend programming, CI/CD, Devops, pipelines to your skill set. I didn't and I am less competitive on the job market as a result.
I wish developers would stay as developers. Most of them are horrible at DevOps, because they know nothing of ops. Sorry guys…
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
That's what I've noticed. Just got AZ-900 cert for cloud, working on an admin cert, and every job is asking for 10+ years of experience and a totally comprehensive service delivery and management package. And there were still like 45 applicants for every job. I didn't stand a chance.
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.
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.
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.
been watching similar videos for almost 4 hours now, and you're the first one that's got it the closest.
I'm a business system analyst, and want to stay relevant, so I need to figure out how to drive forward with the current tools so I can try to stay ahead and not fall behind.
i thought the future would be 3D Visio and 3D Excel, but now I'm sure it's something I haven't even thought of.
cool, im also here on 3days just to see the way out of this. but yea im still young but still kinda want to learn web development..
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.
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
Honestly I’m 2 years into a compsci degree and I’m going to switch to becoming an electrician before I have crippling debt and no job.
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
Exactly what I was thinking!
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.
Don’t worry about it, if the jobs don’t exist then make your own jobs. Use your skills to contribute to society and society will take care of you.
I like how you talk calmly
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.
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!
You got this man, I hope your plans work out.
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.
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.
Protect yourself against your job, Run a side business or contribute to an open earning project streamline that is unrelated to your day job, that way you develop an independent skill against layoffs.
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!
Writing scripts right now on macro econ and how the AI stuff intersects! :)
@@ChangeNodeGreat! Thanks Will :)
AI has done zero to the programming market. Stop perpetuating this myth
Please, does AI know how to fix environmental package issues? LOL.
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.
theres no need to hire juniors. youre missing an important point- any new tech break through works bottom up.
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
love the calm vibes but hints at brutal truth bro ... keep it up great channel!
love this
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.
Funny how immediate that change was once the powers that be got one of their puppets back in office and usurped the truly elected president.
Great video. I heard about an upcoming doctor shortage, yet medical schools still strongly limit how many MDs graduate a year. I used to think this was stupid but now I realize they were artificially limiting supply of doctors to keep their jobs and prestige 💀 Software development is the opposite… 0 barriers to entry + boot camps and oversaturated supply lead to the current problem.
Yeah, different fields come to different places for different reasons. I think that some of the doctor stuff comes from wanting to protect the field from quacks, but it's also very clearly more like an old school guild system in a lot of ways.
I read that the guy that invented the whole "work insane shifts for training" thing was lit up like crazy on cocaine, which tbh tracks. Sigh.
That video was quite insightful! 8+ YEO senior software engineer here. Got laid off in December. Struggling to find a job that won’t pay me like
8 years and still laid off?
8 years and got laid off is scary
8 years laid off means you weren’t performing well sorry bud
Not at all. Entire orgs at my company were dismantled.@@Mustang85635
Lol what a joke, they were already saving massive amounts on remote workers and they want to pay even less… Unbelievable.
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!!!
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
@@Txx00xic Wdym? "Software engineer" has just become a term for a web developer. And every title you mentioned fits under the broad superset of IT
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
The skills of most software developers are pretty low so if you are good you won't have a problem finding jobs.
@@asdf8948Seniors are struggling to find jobs aswell, good/experienced ones are getting their proverbial heads lopped off too.
@@asdf8948 I agree and disagree. On one hand, having very good technical skills is a big plus, but I've learned the hard way that being good still isn't enough. I'm in the top 1% of competitive programming, worked at FAANG, built my own startups, worked at series A startups, etc. I breeze through the technical rounds and "just know" how to do it. I can't explain how my brain just "knows" it, but I've been writing code for almost 20 years now and am self-taught (I'm not trying to show off or sound arrogant, but this is meant to add context and some validity to my comment). Believe it or not, this just isn't enough. I'm also AuADHD and even though I finish the technical problems early and chat with the interviewer for the remaining time, this sometimes gives the interviewer a weird feeling, and I'll usually make it to the final rounds without issues. I've been rejected after talking to interviewers in a positive way and even get feedback from other NT friends on how they think it went. Overall, I might be very good at tech, and can communicate it very well, as well as articulate the tradeoffs between multiple solutions, but I still get rejected very often due to the fact people just don't want me due to my social skills (which are below average, yes, but I consistently cheer others up and make sure to collaborate and offer help. Overall trying to be a team player). I love to share my passion for this field and teach others (I was also a mentor for many years to CS students) and I still get filtered out on things like "Firm handshakes" & "What's your favorite sports team?". How do I know this? Technically, I never will, because that would be grounds for a lawsuit lol. But, from the sheer number of interviews and pass rates, as well as people I've talked to who can give me an NT perspective makes this very obvious.
@@asdf8948 The problem is because the standards is so low, companies can no longer tell who are good candidates. Everyone got python certificate, grinding leetcodes, went through 1000hrs of coding camp, with CS degree, and they all be passing tech coding interviews. Then what else can you do to filter people out? We got 50-60k unemployed software engineers in the bay area alone, with only 5k-6k job openings. Meaning you're competing against 9 other people plus god knows how many engineers in india and china waiting to come over. Maybe 40-50 candidates for every 1 job. -.- It's getting tougher and tougher since 3 month ago.
Damn you made the right choice doing that wow
There are no tech jobs in India as well, many employees are forced to resign. We are in a similar situation worldwide. Same thing happening in China, malaysia, Phillipines and poland too
Yup, I think that the first thing LLMs have done is eliminate a lot of outsourcing. Next few years are going to be, umm, interesting I think.
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...
Thank you for your input; we greatly value hearing from you 🙏🙏
Thank you! :)
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.
Hi, I hope that you don't mind taking some time to answer my question. My translation/graphic design gig got automated recently. I'm left questioning a lot of things, and I'm really interested in software engineering as that's something I always wanted to do, but life and opportunities took me in another direction.
How would I be able to use the AI to my advantage if it replaced me, if I was a software engineer?
I have been doing QA for over 20 years and there was a time when QA needed to make a decision. Learn how to manage people, or learn how to code. I went the management route and then never really had time to learn to code until it became required in order to maintain automated tests. Now I'm looking for QA Management jobs but without the coding skills to create and maintain an automation framework (which I probably would not actually be doing) all my QA experience is worthless. Moral of the story? Not sure. I got a week left of my unemployment so I guess I'll try to learn how to make fries.
Well, one can't exist in industry without fundamentals.
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
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.
Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life
@@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.
🤣
@@ChangeNode "yeah, I like love having booze before noon, never really had a job, so I do what I love in a way"
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 have seen people good at softskill and extrovert moves slowly to the management side of business, easy money
Wait until your job is automated also. I am sure you ll have fun.
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.
That was 20 years ago. It’s a dead end now for sure. It’s not because something was not true 20 years ago that it will never be true.
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
This is really helpful. A guide from experienced folks like you is very much needed.
Thank you. Please do more of this.
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.
Sadly i graduated in 2019 and due to family things, i gave up my opportunities to help them out more because i couldnt watch my mom deal with my dad's health problems alone. Fast forward to 2024 and my dad passed away and tech job market isnt good to get started. I dont regret my choice though.
I'm so sorry. My dad died right after I turned 18 and tbh I was still processing aspects for decades. I am so grateful to be around for my son now. Every minute a treasure.
Good luck and all the best.
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
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.
@@JD-vj4go I wish I only had to read comments like yours when I browse internet. I like smart people.
Those who say human creativity will be squelched by whatever these algorithms entail do not understand or value creativity. I am looking forward to seeing what happens to the first company to go all in on the current generation AI.
Human creativity isn't valued by other normal people
Your answer for when will jobs come back is 💯 . Instantly liked and Subbed
Thanks!
Creativity and problem solving skills will be always in demand, that's what AI can't do. But you'll always need to know your field. Needed knowledge shifts from depth to width, that's it.
Also the question, if every company goes dark factory, full of robots and AI buit apps, who will buy your products? Everyone will be poor because no job.
That's (one of) the economic collapse models that is underlying the talk of UBI.
Very much valid point
It's gonna happen eventually.
In other words, I should have been a doctor.
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.
You will see soon enough using skilled nurses with LLMs replacing doctors and putting a downward pressure on their wages as well
You’ll be in debt and possibly shipped off to Nebraska but you’ll have a job if you even get into med school and finish.
@@eliana993 I have a relative who's about to make half a mil a year as a doctor at a hospital working 4 days a week...
Yeah doctors have a strong union type of thing called ADA where they limit the number of people who can become doctor in school programs
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.
I touch on this in the Java jobs video a bit, check that out and comment if you have more Qs
@@sxxon751What do you mean by data engineering? Python? What concepts should I be googling here?
@@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?
@@woofmeow247 yes its a bit lower. Entry level positions in thefield is 40k, i got 55k and mid career my age is about 60-70k.
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
That’s where I see things headed too. That coupled with systems language modeling know-how.
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)
You are correct. But other engineering branches have a very low demand. But now that’s Changing
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.
The tech jobs will come back when section 174 of the us tax code is fixed so that tech R&D is immediately deductible from corporate profits again.
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.
Really appreciate the market/finance informed view here. I would subscribe for this kind of content.
Yeah, IMHO the biz side is very important but for devs. Trying to thread the needle on that one...
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”
This video tells us: Time to quit tech job, get a new job elsewhere, get a new life!
The problem with most of us is we are looking for a comfy job at a fancy company making 6 figures.
No one talks about this but if you start helping small businesses with technology you could be making a LOT of cash. You just need to get out of the mindset of I can only code in X or be a tiny cog in a huge company in order to make money.
Think about business automation and how to help small businesses with tech that will actually move the needle for them
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.
Same here
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?
I know this channel is focused on developers, I'm in the 'data science' route and have always worked closely with true developers and held much respect for them. 29 year old with 8 years of experience in IT from helpdesk to SQL Administration to IT Manager who lead several CRM app development projects (~200 employee company).
Just finished a Masters in Data Science and feel like I'm obsolete and walking into a barren desert of zero opportunity.
Did you cover ML stuff in school or...?
@@ChangeNode ML stuff from the 2015s.
It covered Random Forest, MLR, SVMs, Log Reg, NNets.
It didn't get into RNNs, CNNs, GANs, Stable Diffusion, Transformers. Im doing those on my own best I can. You may consider those AI rather than Data Science, which is probably the accepted categorization, but there aren't really job openings for the ones I covered.
Didn't touch Keras/Tensor/PyTorch. Again doing those on my own.
Most positions want 5+ years of experience with a specific model type so I'm not sure it really would've mattered.
Thoughts? Bad choice of program?
@@crossfire340 Yeah, superficially it looks good but I agree the hotness now is more modern stuff. WRT experience it's like that all around, everyone needs 3-5 but nobody wants to train/ramp/etc.
Similar to the rest of the advice - add a domain, portfolio, have to network, maybe present at a user group etc. Firing off resumes online has from what I can tell a 1% or lower inquiry-to-job rate regardless. Heck I think it's less than 5% even getting back an acknowledgement of receipt.
@@ChangeNode Thanks for the reply. Will be trying to twist my capstone project into utilizing PyTorch in a multi model architecture with an LSTM + Log Reg model to start touching the new hotness (mainly getting accustomed to pytorch)
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.
Embedded developers are still highly sought for. Very difficult to find people who know how to do board brinup, write HW drivers etc.
Can you say more about this market?
May I ask how can a generalist crack into this market?
@@gz6x buy a board. Hack away. Learn everything about that board.
@@deldiathanks a lot!
Don't you need an engineering degree for that?
I want people, especially experienced, to understand that people looking into the market now, not to change jobs but to GET a first job, especially people that are starting maybe a Computer Science or Engineering degree: they are not looking at 1, 2, 5 years. When you say "don't worry it's gonna take 10 years for a lot of these jobs to start to disappear, what you're saying is "if you study 4-5 years, you have 5-6 of work before you have to accept you wasted 10 years of your life and maybe can't even transfer those skills"
Yeah, depends on the target job. Front end only JS web dev vs say driver dev are very different. Not sure how the specialist vs generalist stuff will pan out in particular 🤔
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.
A little pessimistic approach but valid points. Robotics is hard. So If you are under 30 years old, you must start to lean towards robotics. Considering with Starlink, robotics and IoT will be every open field you can even think. Farming, travelling, autonomous vehicles, remote construction operators etc...
Data science has limited seats, plus it can be done by AI way easier than SW. It has been around some time. Also I believe LLMs requires a lot of capital before even be a product. Plus AI market is "winner takes all" market. Whoever comes with AGI first, the game is over. It'll be next giga success.
As someone who lives in Europe, knowing some domain information,I'll rely on fintech dinasours to not wanting to change their tech stack anytime soon, until always when it is too late.
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.
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...
its easy to be hired while you are working.
so you don't need a leap of faith, just send your cv online
Are you Indian??
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.
test automation is sweet because it was intractable before genAI
If your tests are machine generated they aren't actually testing anything
@@josephp.3341 I agree
Maybe because that managers doesn’t know what exactly “AI” is.
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.
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
honestly, this point - and likely most points in the future- electrical engineering is a more nimble degree to get. gives you the fundamentals to break into all of the other sides of software theoretically - then the practice of code is just practice.
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
Thank the Goddess I am a Principals Engineer with 27 years of very diverse experience from ETLs, Cloud, and architecture. It would be near impossible to be starting now.
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.
Yeah I got into SWE kinda knowing that the whole 200k full stack dev thing was just a bubble.
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.
Robotics is going to be the next huge thing. It's a gigantic field of opportunities - there are so many things that can be automated! I don't think software engineering is going away. I think it's getting transformed. If you are a web dev, the demand for coding there will go down. Invest in learning how to tinker with hardware, doing embedded coding, small automation projects. It will pay off in the long run
Did you check out the pivot to robotics and robotics cost videos?
I've got an EE and have been Tinkering with ARDUINO and RASPBERRY PI for almost 8 years now. Where would I look for a job in that field?
People don’t use software/ websites anymore. Most people just consume content from 3-5 websites.
That’s not true.
People use software for everything but you’re right that only a few big players have imprinted themselves into everything and then there are millions of small businesses relying on them. Places like Intel, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple are major players in everything from cloud services, processors, OSes, Gaming, phones, Web, streaming, etc.
In essence, it’s oligopololized.
It’s just weird to see small businesses following the same process as FAANG to hire engineers. Even if you find an engineer who passes all leet code style tests, passes behavioral tests and 2/3 more random interviews. If that engineer is really that good, why would he waste his talent there? It’s exactly what I’m noticing right now. Rockstars are leaving within 6 months of employment and the company is struggling to fill a position that can be easily done by a mid level engineer with just basic programming experience.
Non-technical people hiring technical people is always a challenge. I've noticed this as a big problem for at least the last ten years or so. A lot of the small businesses seem to hire talent based on resume w/o knowing what they are even hiring.
Strange days.
I would also add that many people are getting laid off because work is going offshore. So even if there is an up tick in the macroeconomic conditions, there is an increasing appetite for employing people in cheaper geographies. And as for AI, who knows how many jobs will be available?
Offshore is an excellent model for how the AI stuff may unfold. Both involve people getting laid off for cheaper options. The interesting thing is that IMHO globalization is on a downward trend at the same time as the AI/robotics/automated manufacturing stuff is picking up. Interesting times and all that.
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?
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.
I am both an Electrical Engineer and Software Engineer, have experience in both but currently doing Software. I am thinking of transitioning back to Electrical but i really did enjoy Software while it lasted.
Sanity check w/indeed, linkedin, and talk to recruiters to get a sense of it. Both ftw imho.
Software is dead and electrical is back on
NEVER. I’ve worked in silicon valley type companies 60% of people in the building are doing NOTHING for 90% of the day, its time to end this over reliance on computers
I'm wary but I still feel relatively safe. I graduated in 2020 and there were barely any job postings then. Took a beneath the average starting pay programming job just cause I was happy to be offered something.
I'm still with them because it feels stable and I'm afraid to make a move somewhere just to be laid off.
It's steady, slow moving business software in an old language. But it's still been a solid learning experience, lots of practical knowledge that wasn't covered deeply enough in college.
Many people would probably find it boring or scoff at the pay (it's not low, just low for SE) but we haven't had a single layoff yet. We have an AI tool that got introduced recently but I'm not sure how useful it will be. It was getting a lot of things about both our front end and back end language completely wrong, I haven't played with it too much yet though.
The shit will hit you when you have least expected
XR and Vr will probably be a pivot of mine in the next couple of years...along with ML
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.
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...
In Obama’s words: those jobs aren’t coming back.
Capital borrowing costs have more than tripled because as boomers moved into retirement most moved away from higher risk investments for T bills, bonds, and low risk investments. That’s over 6 trillion wiped off the market making it more competitive to secure investments. It is not an interest rate issue.
Ooh, Peter Ziehan fan?
Yeah, I don't know exactly how to tease apart the investing mix, the rates, and all the rest of it. I'm noticing the huge amounts moving into AI and robotics vs traditional software plays. I'm a bit skeptical that boomers rebalancing portfolios are the main driver for a variety of reasons.
Any good data sources on this stuff beyond FRED stuff?
Software engineering requires constant learning outside of work. Its the only way to keep up is to learn something that is used and hot in the market to some extent