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 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee to c/unpopularopinion@lemmy.world

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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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[–] count_dongulus@lemmy.world 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I agree, but for a different reason. Demand for senior/principal engineers is still present, especially for those "third party vendors" you mentioned. But companies are not interested in hiring and training junior devs. They'd rather outsource when long term quality and tight control is not important. Or, for the bigger companies, they'll hire H1-B instead. There are enough senior engineers to be shuffled around for many years now that engineers have reached saturation in many markets.

And it's not that all the software that needs to be created is now present and "good enough". For some industries, that might be valid, but it is definitely not universal. The thing that IS universal is that experienced engineers have become far more productive than they were a decade or two ago because of the large software ecosystem available now. That productivity might outpace what some companies actually can make use of to directly improve revenue or margins compared to their current headcount. (Engineers might still be busy today, but not on things the company considers very valuable.)

I wonder if we will see growth in software consulting or dev agencies as smaller companies find they can do more with less, and only occasionally need more firepower without fully outsourcing.