Unpopular Opinion

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If you're planning on being a software developer, find a different career ASAP. The industry is collapsing and employment prospects are becoming slimmer and slimmer. (lemm.ee)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee to c/unpopularopinion@lemmy.world

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A lot of people will disagree with me on this one. I've been a software engineer for 35 years now. I've worked at everything from tiny companies where I'm the only dev, to startups, to massive corporations with countless employees. And I've never seen anything like what's happening now.

There are four factors:

H1-Bullshit. Never before have so many H1-B visas been allowed. And the number is only going up. For the uninitiated they're work visas that cap the amount the dev can legally be paid and chain them to their job so they can't quit. They're horribly exploitative and bring down everyone's paycheck.
The software already built is good enough. Organizations already have either decade+ old software solutions in place or third party vendors that provide those solutions. There will always be bug fixes and maintenance but nobody is building new software from scratch anymore. The stuff that already exists is good enough at what it does that it isn't worth the investment to make something new. That means fewer devs are needed for writing that software.
Destruction of the public sector. A LOT of unemployed and experienced devs are about to be looking for jobs. If you have less than 10 years of experience be prepared for finding a job to become nearly impossible. Even if the next administration takes a different approach it will take many years to undo just the damage that's already been done.
AI. I actually don't think AI on it's own will be terribly destructive to the industry. It's a tool that will make devs more efficient and cause a slight drop in openings. But combined with everything else it's just one more factor hurting the industry.

When people ask me how to get into software development I tell them not to bother. I encourage you to consider it as well. The golden age of IT careers is over.

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[–] assaultpotato@sh.itjust.works 18 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I... somewhat agree. Job postings are currently at a local minimum, and if you're intermediate/junior it is pretty rough out there.

But postings are still around 2021 levels overall, which while not amazing, still have jobs available. I got a couple of decent-but-not-amazing offers last year.

Really the biggest trend I've noticed is that real seniors are genuinely impossible to find/hire. Hiring has become a spamfest. Companies use LLMs to poorly filter resumes. Candidates use LLMs to shoddily write resumes and cover letters. Filtering through this to find the actual senior vs. the guy who worked at FAANG for 3 years and got a staff title for it is virtually impossible. Getting your resume seen through the cruft is also impossible, so many great candidates never make it into the process in any meaningful way. As soon as we get into an interview, it's been incredibly obvious who the good candidates are, and we've hired most of them. But getting good candidates to the interview stage is nigh impossible for candidate and employer.

I guess from my perspective the job market is there, but the process is absolutely horrendous.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I think this is the most accurate take. I'm not at the "don't go into the field" take, but Amazon and Microsoft have been pumping boot camp devs into the market for a decade now promising high paying jobs just so they could do this, flood the market with juniors and pay them peanuts .

So juniors and intermediates are everywhere, the market has been flooded. Also anyone who has written a few lines of python thinks they're a full stack engineer now and label their resume as such, so exactly what you said, the hiring market is flooded with spam.

My company rejects so many people on the first screen who have great resumes but then can't write more than the basic for loops or if statements on the page.

Also AI is becoming a crutch for people. You will not get AI in interviews people. You need to know how to do it yourself. I don't care if you use it for work, but when you're interviewing I'm hiring an engineer, not a prompt writer.

So, the trick is proving you're above the hordes of shit developers, and that's going to mean learning new stacks, pushing yourself harder, and probably doing some real networking. (For those reading who may be looking soon)

The 2010s and covid told people that anyone can code. Well, here it is, the market flooded. Now it's "anyone can code, why should we hire YOU." And you better have an answer for it.