this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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always been
Hmmm. I’ve seen threads on social media from experienced devs having been unemployed for a year now and rather devastated by it.
I know a guy who was let go a year ago. Dude's like 170 IQ - and while people say that, this guy's dizzyingly smart. 3 degrees, he can teach, code to spec, rebuild your delivery pipeline so it fucking howls, manage nerds, and he's been interviewing like it's his job for a year without lasting results.
Some shitty company in Connecticut just flew him out for a project wrap-up, as he's been helping save their ass since their completely out-of-his-depth manager reached out on a public forum for some clue. Like, without him they'd've been 4 kinds of fucked and he was looking for something to keep him sane for a few weeks.
Handshake and a free dinner and sent him packing. Because they could. They got what they needed, and they foolishly think they can get it again when this idiot fucks up again in a month.
I worry a lot of nerds are getting fish-hooked like that, when they just want to make things go and maybe also eat regularly.
Pretty common with OEMs. They hire to develop the new product line, let them go, and make the products until they literally can't anymore.
It can also be a common occurrence and devastating to an individual at the same time. It sucks, and people vent.
I've been in this game a long time and been laid off from about half my gigs. It sucks every time. If it wasn't for the fact that the pay is good and that I like doing it, I probably would've moved to something more stable already.
I’m not disputing their experiences - I’ve replied otherwise on this thread - but I’m going to guess that a lot of those experienced devs didn’t go through the 2000-2002 ish dot com crash, or maybe even the 2008 recession.
Sometimes the money goes away for a while. The money has currently gone away. Eventually they drop the interest rates, people decide that real estate or EVs aren’t sexy anymore because they’re overbought, and the money floods back in. Then it gets too much, to the point that some kid gets $60M for the idea of selling barbecues and charcoal over the internet, and the cycle repeats.
We thought Keynes fixed this but then decided it was more fun for a handful of people to make shitloads of money and then crash the economy every decade or two.
Spot on. A word of advice to people in the tech field: save while the sun shines because another thing you can't time besides the market is when the money will be flowing your way.
I'm somewhat optimistic about the long term prospects because if new technology isn't the future then what is?
But seriously, don't pretend like your high salary will last a lifetime and plan accordingly.
I don't think the money is magically just going to come back this time. I doubt that interest rates will ever drop to the levels they were at before the pandemic.
I fully expect this lull to last at least a few more years, and I doubt the industry will ever recover to pre-pandemic levels. History rhymes, it doesn't repeat, and two very different situations from the past are not necessarily indicative of the future. Plus even if it does recover, you still have to get noticed with 1000 scrubs applying to every job they see. Or pray that your network lands you something, if you're lucky.
Some claimed to have been around long enough to gone through the 2008 recession, but dot com crash would certainly be very unlikely.
I’ve been working in tech in one form or another since about 1994 and even before that if you include “writing some software for some guy’s cash register.” I’ve been through a few of these. They suck, but two years from now it’ll be forgotten.
Ohai. I rode the 1998/99 wave, got hit with the crash, took a cut in one job and grabbed a side-hustle, got laid off in 2006 in the company's 117th round of layoffs (bru-tal), and never been laid-off again. Because if I even smell a whiff of stink-of-death, I'm out. I still have the side-hustle, and in the gaps I just bulk up on it to narrow the gap. Works okay. Now my main gig is union, and since I deliver on my goals and I'm not a sociopath, I have some confidence they'll keep me around for a few years. That'd be neat.
Yup. I went back into academia, then rotated between that, military, and government work. Now I’m waiting to see if the other shoe drops and I either sponge off my partner or buy a beach house in Mexico.
I adjusted to the lower tier fish. Less money, but more stable and less stress.
Whats your side hustle?
Since you survived through the year 2000 you gotta tell us your Y2K story
Oh, that’s a fun one. By the actual Y2K I think I had already transitioned into a dot-commie (where it pretty much was ignored), but the run up was interesting. I was previously in a much more Office Space kind of situation. I was the hot new talent using modern technologies like Perl and Java, but virtually everyone else was writing cobol on green screens for an IBM midrange system, with many many hours dedicated to updating code to use four digit dates. These were the days when news channels were predicting airplanes would fall out of the sky, nuclear plants would melt down, and cash registers would stop working entirely. World ending chaos.
The people around me were doing basically the same job for 30 years. I don’t even know enough cobol to write a joke in it, but we’re not talking about Donald Knuth here. I’m talking about green screen terminals connected via token ring or some kind of crap like that.
This is when Gateway Computer stores were in shopping malls and came with stickers on the front boasting about how they were “Y2K compatible” and were upgradable so that 16 MHz 386SX was the last computer you’d ever need.
Getting old is fun, other than the back pain, organ failure, and that memory thing I can’t remember the name of.
'97 here. Could do this shit in my sleep by now lol
A certain subset of dev thought they were untouchable. Now they are finding out they're the same level of peasant as the rest of us. Hard fall. :/
Always will be
Is this a joke? Software development regularly comes out on top as one of the best jobs. Good pay, relatively low stress, and good work life balance.
Good work life balance? Low stress? Well paid? Not soul crushing?
Nah fam. Pick one, hope to get your second pick, and if you're lucky, skilled, and play your cards right you can get three. You might get none of them.
No one gets all four... Despite what it sounds like, it's an inherently creative job where you rarely get to pick your project and are regularly put on an impossible timeline.
Wage suppression is well documented, and for some reason no one gives raises... Despite the fact even the best devs need half a year, bare minimum, to be fully up to speed with a mature system. If you're lucky, when you jump after 18 months (the optimal time at a place to keep your salary growing, especially in the first decade) you'll inherit a system in good condition with people who can explain it. If you're very lucky.
That being said, it's one of the only middle class industries left. I recommend it to everyone who has the aptitude - it's one of the most useful skills to have, even if you rarely use it.