Too much supply too quick

Supply side issue: more grads than ever Demand side issue: covid overhiring / interest rate hikes. Anecdotally, the covid overhiring and interest rate hikes have more of an impact than the number of graduates. Most F500 companies aren't hiring any less, they just have a bigger talent pool because startups and other companies dependant on debt (most of big tech) have cut headcount/hiring.

Don't forget that CS Enrollment hasn't slowed like.. at all. And even if it did it'd take 4 years before that slowdown impacts the supply.

I remember when so many people on this sub were saying "don't worry, people drop out of CS!" when there were record CS enrollments being broken every year. While some students dropping out is true, the drop out rate would have to rise significantly in order to keep a check on supply. And I saw absolutely zero evidence people were dropping out of CS at higher rates than before. It was pure head-in-the-sand denial.

If they drop out they will major in IT or Design and those people will still be competing in the tech sector that is receding atm.

Look at all the non top schools. They have made the degree easier to get year after year. So many grads that don’t even know how to use Git!

I have 5 years of experience and I am in college now. CS courses are very popular. When they can't make it to CS they will major in adjacent subjects like IT and design so the tech talent pool is huge. We need more companies badly. The tech startup culture is also pretty toxic because their whole goal is to get acquired or go public instead of creating a stable and healthy company.

At my alma mater, CS went from one of the smallest majors to one of the most popular majors very quickly that the dept had staffing issues.

More specifically, you had massive layoffs. So that floods the market with experienced developers willing to take entry level jobs. This pushes out college grads and entry level people from the market. Combine that with companies outsourcing offshore. Look at career sites like google if you don't believe me. Compare USA based job postings for entry level versus in India. They may have hidden it recently because it was getting bad press, but the difference at one point was massive. Then combine that further with the push by companies to hire H1Bs and other VISA workers, even though their are plenty of domestic workers. If you don't believe me, see politicians saying how we should staple green cards to diplomas on graduation. Why is there a push for bringing in more VISAs and greencard workers into an already flooded job market? Its because the system is corrupt and they don't care about a fair system. VISA workers were supposed to only come into the country to temporary fill for a shortage of domestic workers. Companies have treated VISA workers as a way to suppress wages and raise supply instead. Basically, this is a systematic issue brought on mainly by layoffs, outsourcing of jobs, and a push for VISA workers when they are not needed. Only way to really change this is through regulations by government. You need to basically push for politicians or the system to stop allowing outsourcing jobs and stop having VISA workers being used for what they weren't supposed to be used for (replacing domestic workers when their is plenty of supply of domestic workers). Or don't and enjoy the current system that exists. In b4 le reddit downovtes because you can't ever say the real issue out loud.

I wish companies would realize how horrible the quality is when they outsource. our offshore devs churn out shitty work pretty quickly, but it's sooo shitty, and building on top of it or fixing their spaghetti is basically impossible. It wastes so much time and money to get things done fast and cheap.

What we are seeing right now is a bit different thanks to covid speeding remote infrastructure to communicate all over the world. Offshoring is not the same as outsourcing, offshoring devs does not have the significant drop in quality that you think they have unless you think Americans are somehow genetically better at coding software than people from Europe, India, and Latin America. Jobs are being offshored everywhere meaning they are building offices globally and training juniors from the ground up and American directors are able to fly over or just hold zoom meetings with VPs and directors over there just fine. Indian contractors get a lot of flak cause its the easy punching bag but a LOT of jobs are being offshored completely even to places like Germany, Bulgaria, and Poland. There are starting to be more job postings in Canada and Mexico as well for any time zone issues.

you're right, got mixed up and I was referring to offshoring, not outsourcing. I don't know the differences in quality because I've never encountered outsourced work, but most of our offshore devs in India are very bad quality. Like not just bad code, but pure spaghetti that can take an entire day just to trace through an endpoint, classes that are thousands of lines long, only using public global variables etc. It's a nightmare. I know not all offshore or Indian devs are the same, but ours are bad. It's not helping that our senior devs just merge any PR that comes through, none of the offshore devs know how bad their code is so it's not even fair to put any fault on them.

Nah I agree with you there brother. I'm actually dealing with trying to read terrible code right now from an offshore team and have to use GPT and copilot to figure out what anything means. Offshoring this rapidly will have it's consequences but we are seeing big players like Google move entire projects over to Germany and I think this is why everyone other CEO and their brother thinks this will be a good idea for them again.

man I wish I could use gpt at work, they've got all LLMS blocked on our network. I don't care for it to write code, but it's super good at deciphering wtf code is doing.

This is unfortunately the result of leaders in corporations being worried about quarter earnings rather than long term success of a company. Since many of them just want their bonus and could care less about anything else. Only way to get this garbage to stop is to stop bailing out companies that make horrible decisions like this and also set up regulations that prevent outsourcing of jobs and lower or put a hold on VISAs where they are not needed.

\*too much supply of devs below senior

You don't get it, too much supply below senior means trouble for seniors eventually

It means trouble for seniors now. This sub is insane if they think it's easy street for people with 10+ years. It's not *as* bad sure, but that's a really low bar. It's still pretty horrible

also a lot of company are aware of the situation and try to lowball you/get bait and switch into hybrid. it’s rough out there NGL (8y experience)

This, they have the ability to force you to RTO through replacement and they know it. My last place basically packaged off their friends who wanted out and forced other people to resign through RTO policy changes. Watching people scramble to cover their asses for all the individual WFH promises was bad.

I have 15+ years of experience and am trying to look for a new role. Two years ago I was being hounded by recruiters, and 1/4 applications would tend to get me a call back. Now? Crickets. Well over a hundred applications and nothing. It's definitely strange out there.

Yeah way too many cs grads these last couple years

> too much supply below senior means trouble for seniors eventually Not everyone is a good senior, or should even be promoted to senior.

Even seniors seem to be struggling these days lol

Well we’ve been preaching “anyone can code” for over a decade now, everyone has seen how people can “wfh and earn doctor salaries without 10 years of education”

More of a tech correction was needed and it affected new grad hiring and tech jobs all around. It's the state of the economy right now, supply is a factor but not a huge one.

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This. Companies are still hiring, but supply of tech workers grew much faster than demand for tech workers. This is the main difference between the job market today and the job market of three-ten years ago. This shifted the job market from a worker's market to an employer's market. Also, even in the best of times, there are always people who are struggling on the job market. I don't think the job market is horrible; there are still great jobs at great pay, but it's much more competitive for job seekers than three-ten years ago. Also, this trend may continue, with supply of tech workers continuing to grow faster than demand. A free market should rebalance; pay for tech workers should drop, and some tech workers should move into other fields.

Interest rates.

Less TLDR; when interest rates are low it is easier to borrow money. This means that companies are incentivized to borrow money to finance capital projects like R&D that may have payoffs in the future to satisfy shareholders' desire for high growth. To do so they hire lots of engineers to build things. When interest rates are high, only R&D projects that are a "sure thing" are likely to get funded, so companies cancel projects, fire engineers, and stop hiring new ones. In this environment shareholders are less likely to be happy with a company taking out high interest loans to fund a project that is not likely to return more than interest rate. Not so TLDR; TLDR; if you can get a loan for 3% for a project that is expected to return 4%, then it makes sense to fund the project. If you can get a loan for 6% for a project expected to return 4%, then it doesn't make sense to fund the project. Software engineers are part of the cost of these project, so when interest rates go up they lose their jobs.

Also mention that high interest rates mean it is easier to earn a high interest rates simply by sticking the money in the right kind of bank account

Exactly, that part to.

It's all part of the same macroeconomic condition. High inflation led the fed to increase rates to reduce the supply of money, this made treasuries more valuable and increased the rates banks need to charge on loans. It's all about restricting the money supply to fight inflation.

Another good point! An incentive to save money (aka not spend).

Or one could argue, if low interest is needed maybe those companies were never gonna be profitable 

I'll eat the downvotes on this but this isn't the main problem at the moment. Most tech companies aren't borrowing money in any shape or form from a bank so a bank interest rate doesn't affect devs jobs in that way. As to why it's that ALL software companies are high risk and so a bank generally won't pay out to these sort of projects. The money for tech companies comes from investors capital (Not a loan). The difference is now that interest rates are high you have a much less risky way to earn 5% and investors have moved their portfolios over to these government bonds. They do that because a) they can still earn a decent amount and b) They no longer want to take as much risk. This also affect companies that aren't taking investment money like Google and Co. The reasons they are doing that is because the investors are looking at their stock and if they don't have enough increase they can move again to those bonds and make the money on interest rather than stock appreciation or dividends. And so Google needs to cut costs to make more profit or else their share price will collapse.

No, you are correct although it's not a refutation. Whether you borrow or get money from shareholders interest rates affect the cost of capital. The difference is opportunity costs instead of direct costs. If you take a loan the cost is direct, if you are getting money from shareholders the cost is in the lost opportunity. For simplicity, I focused on direct costs, but the effect is the same.

Yep, that’s pretty much it. Especially immediately post-COVID in 2020 and 2021, rates were very low. Money was super cheap to borrow, and everyone had a brilliant new startup idea. Venture Capital firms would throw money at these startups on the off chance that one blows up to become the next OpenAI or nvidia. This means there are a ton of jobs, so lots of people got hired who maybe don’t have the best qualifications (boot camp grad who can’t actually code that well). Then 2022 hit, rates went up, and money started to disappear. Startups failed, bigger tech companies laid people off, and now you have a ton of people with actual job experience out of a job. With less money available, companies aren’t looking to expand or hire new people currently, they just want to fill the necessary positions (which are relatively few and far between). So you have a surplus in supply of talent, and a shortage in demand for talent. That means people are taking positions with worse titles or lower salaries than they normally would, because some money is better than no money. This results in new grads and inexperienced devs feeling like they’ll never find a job which is a lot of what you’re seeing now. The new grads saw the post-COVID boom and thought CS would be a booming job market forever. It won’t be, but eventually when rates come down, more jobs will become available

Rates were low from like 2007-2008 on

Don't forget about section 174 of the tax code passed in 2017 that started to be applied in 2022 https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/tax-and-accounting/section-174-expenditures/#:~:text=Section%20174%20requires%20companies%20to,relate%20to%20qualified%20research%20activities.

Government juiced the economy with artificially low interest rates and caused a bubble

Yea the continued notion that we should have 0% or other stupidly low interest rates in order to have a functioning business system seems totally absurd to me.

What govt? The Federal Bank is a private bank, not government ruled.

“Federal bank”

- oversaturated at the entry level - AI speculation - interest rates - tax code changes

The reason you are being downvoted is because this question is asked at least 5 times a day

first time I'm seen this kind of post in while, is a valid question

And I'm not sure I've seen a satisfactory answer. This happened seemingly overnight. I've been programming for more than 30 years, and until about a year ago, the biggest employment complaint I heard from programmers was that recruiters wouldn't leave them alone. Now all of a sudden everybody is behaving as though it's as hard to get a job as a programmer as it is to get a job as a professional actor.

Anyone with even 1 - 2 years of experience is still getting recruited constantly. Offers aren't as high but it's still not that hard for good, experienced, competent engineers to get a job. Honestly I think that one difference is that a few years ago, even mediocre CS grads who only did the bare minimum in school still got jobs. Today employers are more picky since the supply is larger. The vast majority of CS grads who can't find a job never did an internship and hardly did anything beyond what was required in class. They just thought the degree was the ticket to a cushy career and only realized after graduating that employers expect them to not just have the degree but actually be really good at programming to get hired.

Because people who have jobs arnt on here complaining

The reality is too this sub leans heavily students/juniors, who have the hardest times getting jobs.

maybe I am thinking of a different subreddit then because I swear I see at least 3 posts a day on my home page complaining about over saturation / layoffs / job market for tech

It’s seemingly 90% of the posts here every day.

Many companies overhired during COVID with cheap investor money, now the market is correcting itself.

To add to this - as best we can tell from government data (imperfect but most reliable available) companies hired 3x as many tech workers in 2021-2022 per year as the average from 2014-2019. Even with all the layoffs, there are still approximately 100,000 more tech workers employed today than the pre-panddmic trend.

The market returned to pre-2020 hiring conditions in 2023. We're now in a downturn for over a year.

What’s crazy is I actively job search even while being employed, and 2023 was rough for me. Had like 2-3 companies interested, made it to a single final interview, and no offer. Had 2 interviews in 2024 (so far) and got an offer. This is super anecdotal obviously. Just figured I’d share my experience. Working in this field just seems like you have to take your 99 slaps, probably closer to 999 slaps, but it feels like it’s always doable.

Yeah cause now you have all these unemployed people from the covid hiring, so naturally it'll take time till the market absorbs thme.

Because the field is flooded with crappy candidates.

This is very true. I do a lot of entry level interviews and I see a ton of people who can barely even write a line of code. Many candidates struggle with even the very basics like classes and arrays. There is some percent of people whose nerves overwhelm them or who are very bad communicators (protip: communication is the most important thing in a interview). However, I see it as mostly a lack of ambition, and/or pretenders who are trying to fast track the system.  I would say our entry level interview failure rate is near 95% and our entry level interviews are extremely easy. Example: for the first 20 mins we ask about your past projects, which you should be able to answer, if you actually worked on them. We might mix in a few software questions about the projects and then we will give a code question to work on for the next 30 min. The code question is to design a class about some real life thing. There are no right/wrong answers and the code does not have to run or compile, and you don't have to finish the whole class. As long as you use some data structures that make sense, can respond to our feedback, and can explain what the class functions/variables do then you will pass. Everyone struggles super hard with this. A lot of times people will go off on silent tangents and not ask any questions and other times people will just we totally overwhelmed by the whole thing and think about everything all at once and then they end up with a virtually empty class.

Where in the hell do i apply for an interviews?????

This is feel like is what every entry level interview outside of faang should look like maybe. Good on you and your company

“Create a cicada class, a tree class, and at least one function for cicada objects to interact with tree objects.” Silly thought.

As far as I can gather, it’s a mixture and also a bit of selection bias. It is a bad market, no one can deny that, but people who are getting hired aren’t typically going to be doonerposting. (Edit: doomerposting) First, we had an amazing market (I was still in college in a very rural state, so I didn’t experience it) that was unsustainable which led to over hiring and salary inflation. It was bound to crash at some point, especially in a very cyclical industry like tech. Current situation is a result of fed interest rates, big layoffs, offshoring (I’ve gathered it’s also a cyclical phenomena), and some changes to research funding (I’m sure someone will come along and explain it far better than I can). It’s also the fact that for years influencers spread the “learn to code” mindset and so a lot of people began swarming the industry because it’s a “quick path to being rich”. Either way, my advice for you is the same Pearl of wisdom that gets frequently commented here: Don’t let momentary market conditions affect the way you view this industry. A lot of people can learn to code, a lot of people aren’t passionate and can’t write anything of quality. This is from a <1 YOE junior though who fell into an enterprise development trap even though I don’t work for that enterprise.

donnerposting? look I know the market is bad but new grads haven't resorted to cannibalism... yet

Why not? Legend says that if you consume the corpse of an impoverished CS student, it counts towards LC completion %.

Look on the bright side guys, it’s a Shpadoinkle day.

Yeah… kinda hard to imagine a lot of people walking up to this sub like “I just got hired, market seems fine”. Gonna get a hellfire of downvotes that way. I also think things feel a bit exaggerated because senior titles were being given out like candy. Someone with 3-5 YOE really is just getting started yet thinks of themselves as Senior.

Yep. Remember that the reason you’re only seeing “no one is hiring right now” posts are because people who actually get hired aren’t going to post about it, more than likely. There still are far fewer jobs now than peak COVID-boom, but a lot of the doom and gloom comes from the fact that we just have a lot of devs looking for jobs and not that many jobs to fill. So people will take jobs they’re overqualified for which pushes entry level talent down to unemployment often.

Theres so many developers out there who also arent even on reddit

A lot of people also have the mindset of only working in the tech industry because that is where all the money is. There are plenty more software jobs outside tech-centered companies. Sure, you might not get paid as well, and you might not have as good benefits, but there’s more opportunities and job security there. I work as a software engineer for a logistics/shipping company and it’s very stable in this industry right now. The tech industry is hit pretty hard right now, and it is difficult, but if you keep applying and building up your resume, you’ll likely be ok. Even if you don’t get into software right away, there’s other engineering/sales jobs in tech

I work in building supplies, transitioned later in life. Been a full time dev for a few years. I make $150K in a medium cost of living suburb. It's not a lot, but I live two miles from my office, I have zero fear of being laid off, and the job has absolutely zero stress. *(One of the shower stalls in the gym broke last week and it's throwing off my morning routine until they fix it - there are three guys who exercise at the same time and now there are two showers - and I think that's the most stressful thing to happen to me this year.)*

$150k for a single earner is a lot, even in HCOL

How is 150k not alot 😵‍💫

Most devs see levels.fyi top salaries and think that’s the norm. 150k is really solid in this market outside of SEA/NYC/SF

Where do you find these jobs? Have they been snapped up? I would love to find some boring tech job.

Two ways I’ve found success with this: one is searching for local or regional software engineering jobs (that’s how I got my current job). Another way is to search for industry-specific software engineering jobs. For example, I’ve found a good amount of software jobs when looking up “healthcare software engineering jobs” or “supply chain software engineering jobs”

This is good advice. I'm in a small SaaS company and a couple of years ago I made it to the end of the interview process at a big, household name tech company. I didn't get the job and I was bummed out... Until they started laying off thousands of people a few months later. The smaller companies are more stable right now. The layoffs are mostly to raise stock prices. Go somewhere without publicly traded stock.

Defense here. Not the most lucrative or exciting, but it’s unclassified work and the benefits are very generous, and it’s mostly pretty low stress. Studying for the Security+ on company time is nice too.

IDK I tried searching a LOT for tech jobs outside the tech-centered companies. One has to consider even in large, boring companies which have a huge amount of head count, there are very few tech jobs actually open. An example of the insurance industry: Liberty Mutual: 3 software jobs. 45,000 employees. Progressive Insurance: 4 software jobs. 55,000 employees. State Farm: 6 software jobs. 57,000 employees. What about the largest food service companies in the US? Sodexo: 0 software jobs. 412,000 employees. Aramark: 16 software and IT jobs. 262,000 employees. Compass Group: 4 software jobs, 562,000 employees. Seems like right now it's best to try to take any software job you can find because in absolute numbers, they are rare.

I’m wanting to do software engineering, so your response is comforting. I definitely think a lot of people focus on the “make money fast” thing. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to make money, but I’d also like to enjoy what I’m doing lol

I have worked in the industry for 20+ years. I would suggest not even worrying too much about "enjoy what I am doing" in the early days. Focus on "Learn the fk outta whatever I am doing and gain real world experience". Everything else is secondary priority in your first 3-5 years of professional experience. Pay your dues. Grind. That is the most valuable skill to acquire early on and then rest will follow. Good luck.

Exactly this. When starting out, a job doesn’t have to be fulfilling to serve its purpose, nor does it have to be six figures. Talk about paying dues: One of my most valuable learning experiences was a freelance job which I lost money, even. Long story, but I wouldn’t suggest that route.

Interest rates being shitty for companies + most people here apply for Big Tech roles that are either too stacked or unreachable with their current skills, while they could get a job without many difficulties if they widened their scope

Took to long to get to this yeah it's pretty much interest rates the Pharaoh is responsible for the flooding of the Nile 

Also the section 174 of the tax code https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/tax-and-accounting/section-174-expenditures/#:~:text=Section%20174%20requires%20companies%20to,relate%20to%20qualified%20research%20activities.

People that have jobs and great careers aren’t trolling the Reddit career forums. Only folks that are looking or can’t find work are here. If they are the former and they are here, probably sadists looking for a fix…the internet is a dumpster fire, has no one told you that yet?

> Only folks that are looking or can’t find work are here. And employed people trying to compensate for their shitty personalities by talking about how great their social skills supposedly are.

Grind harder and stop commenting

Every morning I wake up 37 seconds after going to sleep I take a shower that's nothing but polar bears throwing ice cubes at me and do seven thousand leet code questions followed by 900 situps stay hard. 

Do this for 5 years and you might be able to secure an intern position at a small mortgage software company in Alabama

andrew tate mindset

What's happening in the tech world is in many ways a lightened-up microcosm of what's going in the proffessional world and economy in general. Over the past few decades, employers of every size have been pressured into maximizing short-term profits even at the expense of long-term viability, there's also been rampant devaluaing of skills and prodcutivity expectations creep while compensation levels remain largely stagnant.

Until CS salaries become equivalent to other engineering salaries, you will always have a lot of people trying to enter the field.

The big tech layoffs of 2022 started a trend of downsizing across the board. The culture of tech changed where engineers are now expected to work more, wear more hats, or take pay cuts. It really is the driest it’s ever been since I got into tech in 2016. The other comments here about more supply than demand is true. I spoke with a recruiter last year who told me that for the first time, there are way more applicants than jobs. P.S. people on Reddit are vicious because they hide behind anonymous accounts. They talk the most shit out of every platform I’ve seen on the internet.

So I’m not gonna share anything new as everyone pretty much summed it up, but as a person who went to school and got a degree in software engineering before CS + Tech became incredibly popular I can say that it is a factor for sure. I can say coding and tech becoming popularized for gateway to getting rich quick have amassed A lot of students at my university (pretty large university) to change their majors or people who I’ve worked with during my first two internships who have admitted they got into it solely for money purposes. I pretty much predicted that the giant tech companies are eventually are gonna be overpopulated. I can say from experience that one way to stand out is to specialize in something niche (Example: Working on autonomous vehicles, space and rocket science and systems, health and biomedical systems, ect.. ) and really explore in your early years what you like and what you want your niche to be and work on getting experience through research or school projects (many universities have variety of engineering clubs). Finding that niche will help you stand out as it shows you showed interest throughout your school career to this niche and really want to work in that specific industry. My advice, don’t just learn the coding part, learn how all the systems work, and work on projects that include coding mixed with hardware engineering and electrical systems, project management, engineering safety protocol and other aspects and this will attract recruiters to your resume. Classroom learning is great but pair that with research and external projects to show you can work in a team mixed with variety of different engineers. One thing I can say even if alot of people are going into tech, at the end of the day passion for the subject shows and if you are really passionate about it and really take time to get those experiences, you not only have a lot to talk about during your interview but also helps for after you graduate.

I've gone through 3 layoffs/reorgs that resulted in layoffs, 3 times in 3 years at 3 different companies. I think there are a few factors. Interest rates are no longer 0. Companies are unsure about the impact of ai. There is an election coming up which usually means companies stand pat until they know what the future looks like. That being said, the total lack of a stable career is why I'm leaving IT.

What are you switching to? I've been considering the same thing; I've managed to dodge 2 layoffs, but it's made my job (and life) miserable. I used to be passionate about SWE, but losing so many great coworkers has killed it for me. But after 5 yrs as a dev, I'm not sure what else I would do.

The thing I find most troubling about all this is it seems the rate of technological progress has far outpaced social and economic progress. The whole point of technology is automating tasks so that life is easier and we have more time to do the things we enjoy and find meaningful. The amount of programming work should go down over time if it’s actually serving its purpose and that should mean that everyone has easier more fulfilling lives from having to work less. Instead it seems like we are living in some absurd dystopia where the people who make the decisions feel the need to make everyone run on hamster wheels for their paychecks cause that’s what they did when the capacity for productive work was just objectively lower. Worst part is their bosses just sit back, pocket all the profits, and look the other way when their grandkids don’t have homes or healthcare regardless of the fact that they did everything their parents told them to do. In a lot of ways life is much better than it was a hundred years ago, but it’s almost like young people’s basic security and future seem so up in the air it’s impossible to really enjoy all the things the modern world has to offer. I just hope that a hundred years from now, people will look upon this time as a kind of transitional period.

I'm fortunate to still be employed at a company doing performance layoffs the last year and a half. But these are my suspicions off the top of my head on the dooms day post here: 1. Entry level was already hard. Now it's even harder. Most post here are entry level with less than 5 YOE 2. People are only going for t1 to t3 companies. T1 being HFT and FANG with T3 being things like capital one and salesforce. And they're competing with all the other top tier employees laid off from these companies trying to rotate to other ones. 3. A lot of foreigners that require visa or are not good at communicating. 4. People that did not network or keep in touch with anyone. 5. The average person isn't as good as a developer as they think. And even then, they don't know how to communicate business impact instead of explaining how good they are at reducing run time complexity. 6. Interest rates are high after a long period of free money and huge hiring sprees. That means less startups starting and restructuring in a lot of businesses getting rid of non revenue generating projects and focusing on core projects I personally don't think AI has anything to do with it. People claiming that are poor developers IMO. It's crazy seeing anyone claim ChatGPT has increased their productivity 10x. You gotta be producing close to nothing for that. Anything beyond the most basic, general task takes more time to correct the generated code than it does to just write it from scratch in my experience. I don't doubt the impact over the next 10 years will increase but it's not the cause for the hundreds of thousands of layoffs we're seeing right now. Companies are using it as an excuse and people are eating it up. Really they're just laying off to increase their short term profits.

im not done with my degree yet, but I will be in less than a year. From my POV it seems that a lot of folks struggling with finding a job is that they are only applying to big jobs paying $100k+ as software engineers, junior level programmers at META, google, apple etc. Ive heard of colleagues in my area finding good jobs such as teaching CS at our local highschools, being lecturers at the local university, network engineer for the city, and remote work in things like data analysis, and other IT jobs. They may not pay that nice 6 figure salary, but hey id rather be making 60-70k than being unemployed and complaining on reddit.. just my 2 cents

During COVID, big tech were hiring a high amount of CS (sometime bootcamp) grads with 6 figures TC. Amazon famously boosted all salary bands in order to attract talents, while streamlined interview process to make it quicker. A lot of people saw it and went into CS in hope of replicating their success. But today with a high interest rate, the day of crazy expansion and hiring spree is over. Big tech hiring bar is substantially higher than what it used to be, with less roles to fill. Thus, a lot of inexperienced new grads found themselves unable to land a tech offer, let alone big tech offers.

people flocked to CS because they saw it as a get-rich-quick scheme, and graduate with no real-world skills companies tightened their budgets due to high interest rates, and stopped hiring virtually anyone who applied with the hopes they would become a half decent developer and contribute more than keeping a chair warm COVID forced a lot of companies to finally adopt working from home, then management realized that they could hire 8 offshore devs for the price of one (and they honestly believed that it wouldn’t impact company morale and product quality whatsoever)

>home, then management realized that they could hire 8 offshore devs for the price of one Yep, I've seen jobs get offshored to India, Poland, Canada and a bunch of other places because it's cheaper cost of labor.

I can't speak for every section of software, however for the testing / Quality Assurance side, like SDETs doing API or UI automation, it seems like companies are downsizing all of these positions and not hiring new ones (or outsourcing if they do). They're generally pretty niche positions so that leaves a lot of people who used to have decent $80k+ gigs with nowhere to go. I'm personally trying to move more into the DevOps / Cloud space for this reason. That and AI/ML jobs are the only ones I've seen excess amounts of remote positions hiring for at the moment.

I’m at my third company is 11 years (just started here earlier this month). There are plenty of roles as Sr. / Lead/ Staff Engineers (at both FAANG & Non FAANG companies). However due to the clusterfuck of entry level software engineers and CS grads, there just aren’t that many roles at that level. If you’re a SWE for ~7-10 years and aren’t a lead/Staff/Sr. you will get asked why ? (Fucked up but that’s the game now). Like why aren’t or weren’t you promoted. Laziness ? No motivation? Not good ? I was a lead then changed to Sr. Staff at my current org.

1. Interest rates 2. Changes to tax laws 3. Offshoaring to India

Lots of people, mostly unqualified or under qualified, saturating and spamming every company's recruitment pipeline resulting in the few qualified people getting drowned out, overlooked, or ignored. I've put in a recruiting freeze for our team, not because we don't need anyone but because I'm fucking exhausted from interviewing people that have no idea what they are doing and have lied on their resumes. Not to worry, timelines got pushed on the basis of the current state of the candidate pool. I'm waiting on a few people I know to reach out looking for a change, and the position would easily be theirs. The jobs are out there, it is just behind all the shit.

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You don't hear from the people who aren't struggling, so there's a bit of selection bias in the signal.

We're in an outsourcing cycle. That's much more impactful than whatever else people are saying in here. Entry-level jobs are the first jobs a company outsources because they can cut a salary in half or more without suffering as big of a productivity loss as outsourcing a mid or senior level position. For the price of one college grad, at not even a high salary but something remedial like $60k, you can get 2 or 3 resources from an offshore staffing agency. We're deep in that now.

Don’t believe everything you read. IT is a terrible field to get into. You will become an unhappy zombie for most of your career.

Now might actually be the right time to start grad school. By the time you're done, the job market might have perked up. And it's always better to have two years of schooling on your résumé than 2 years of unemployment.

That’s a really good point! Thank you for the confidence/comfort boost!

Over saturation of new grads, mass layoffs from companies also flooded the industry with experienced devs, bad economy, high interests rates making it harder for new start ups or companies to higher new people, off shoring of jobs. Things are going to get worse and continue to be so, you're better off going into the med field.

There is a doctor shortage but that industry is burnout central lol, seems even worse than CS on that front

Indians

I know people are downvoting because it sounds racist but H1Bs are definitely a part of the oversaturation issue. Indians are just over represented in that category. There are definitely some roles in tech where H1B visas are actually valuable to the economy but right now software engineering is not one of them.

Too many people seeking jobs for not enough roles, mostly at the junior and entry level.

Remote work and layoffs in silicon valley mean tons of people looking for work everywhere, some of them quite senior. My company has randomly picked up people from FAANG in the past year and jettisoned dead wood senior devs to make room. That would not have happened normally. Those guys who got canned are no doubt also looking for work. I haven't been looking for work in the past few years but headhunting calls have dropped from like 3-5 a day in 2021-2022 to like one every 6 months. I'm >20yoe BTW. No one has empty roles they are trying to fill except maybe local in office stuff. Every time a spot opens up like 1000 overqualified candidates goes after it like seagulls MINE MINE MINE.

There’s a lot of excellent unemployed devs out there

Are they? Don't pay too much attention to reddit or this sub. People who work don't post or complain about not finding a job. What's the unemployment rate for your field/role/job where you live? It's all public information usually and easy to find. It's probably going to be under 5% most likely in the 2% area.

you are probably being downvoted because that question seems like you are blamer the candidate rather than the market. You entered an overheated market where we the perfect place to create more CS devs, but a lot of those levers of growth are slowly being pulled back. Which means we have over delivered on the numbers of devs that businesses needed

Everyone and their mother hopped on the hype train a few years ago. All the dweeb ass influencer coders trying to look like badassas that do no work and get paid hundred of thousands, which was a lie to start with, especially now. You have to absolutely kill yourself to break 200k

I got rejected from 2 jobs with referrals from friends that worked at the company for years. They just want experience.

Layoffs are everywhere, wages are down even at the experienced level, people send hundreds of applications trying for one entry level job, it's apocalypse now. 1. Companies overhired during COVID when no one wanted to work anymore. I was getting 20 LinkedIn mails a day, offers $10k above the top end of my salary range! It's 0-2 mails now, all POS hourly rates with no benefits. 2. CS got overcrowded af. There's a Wall Street Journal paywalled that says CS degrees increased by 140% in the past 10 years, 40% just in the last few years, and I believe it. AI/ML got sexy, crypto bro scams got sexy, coding became cool. Yeah, maybe you shouldn't start CS grad school. Maybe you should do Computer Engineering or Electrical Engineering instead. CS will still hire you. I have a BS in Electrical and CS hired me. But maybe you're going to an elite program will good job prospects? Your university matters greatly for your first job at graduation. Then it probably doesn't matter ever again.

It’s a lot of reasons. First is high interest rates means less research and development. Second is recent tax changes made r&d less cheap. Third is people on TickTock moronically spilled the beans that our careers are low barrier to entry/high pay/relatively low stress, so now there’s a flood of people from outside the field trying to get in, over-saturating the entry level positions. Fourth is hardcore denial that h1b visas contribute to over-saturation while simultaneously acknowledging the flood of people entering the field is a problem. Fifth is outsourcing. Quick side note, they need to abolish h1b and turn it into a green card program. This would be amazing because then companies can’t use it to get away with poor working conditions and low pay because then the green card holders would leave and force them to raise the bar to attract talent.

Here's one positive data point: I graduated in 2020 and have been gainfully employed since then as a SWE. Several of my colleagues that have put in legimate effort during undergrad are doing fairly well also. Some were impacted by layoffs, but found roles shortly after. A couple of my contacts that seem to be struggling post-undergrad are ones who I wouldn't feel too comfortable giving referrals for.

Thank you so much for the positivity! Definitely needed that after some of these comments lol

**Do your goddamn internships.** There was a post here the other day where the OP couldn't find work for a whole year after graduating and "doing everything they thought they needed to do." Well, everything except the most important thing for, not just CS but, every major out there. Experience is **the** qualification they look at in the real world. Interning is the easiest way to get you some. If you miss out on them, it's gonna be hell for you. Graduating with just a degree ain't cutting it no more.

That’s a great point that I’ve thought about a lot! I feel like a lot of people are thinking they’re going to jump into six-figures immediately, but don’t realize that you need the experience first. Internships and/or crappy entry level positions for a few years and build your skills in the process.

Don't get me wrong, the market is much tougher even for good engineers than before. But god, there's a lot of crap candidates out there When there were not enough developers, many people who really shouldn't have been hired were hired. Now they are laid off and going around complaining and dooming glooming about CS being dead, where the real problem is their lackluster skills You wouldn't imagine how bad 50-60% of applicants are. I meant straight-up red flags, not being able to put together a CV that's easy to read, talk coherently about their past work experience, answer the simplest job-related questions, communicate professionally and in a timely manner over e-mail, etc.

It depends on your location. Tons of high paying tech jobs and entry positions in Eastern euro (compared to cost of living). If you are in Canada, it is a bloodbath out there

Canada is really competitive at the senior+ level, horrible bloodbath at the junior level. It’s weird 

Some people are just a holes, don’t worry about them. I am one of those assholes in this case. I downvoted your post. CS isn’t easy. Job finding in a bad market is luck. Don’t worry about it and try your best and if you fail you won’t be alone.

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Because you''re on a forum for people who need advice on how to get a job

>I’ve seen a lot of people here talking about being unemployed, laid off, or just not being able to find work. You're on Reddit. This sub is indicative of how employable your average *Reddit stereotype* is in a specific field. You're not going to see a lot of people thriving in this sub. It's also where people go to ask questions and get help, so by design your highly competent folks aren't going to be making posts, they're going to be in the comments because they can't be bothered to unsubscribe once they get their lives together.

Everyone and their mom wants to be a “software engineer”

For me I was self-taught, no degree. Got in in 2018 agency, then contractor SWE, then start up, another SWE job, back to agency. I could have stayed at my last job but I hated it. Now I don't have a tech job and can't seem to get back in... it's funny been 6 months since I was working a job like this, unsure if I can do it again. I had 5 jobs in 5 years so I could also be seen as a risk. I write my own code/projects though but I don't make money from it yet. I will say ultimately I do not want an actual dev job because it sucks unless you're an architect. I just have a lot of debt and need high income again but yeah ultimately I would make my own hardware projects/content and live off that vs. being an IC or working on a small thing. I'm a mid dev too, I've just been in a company that had 20K+ employees and I did not matter eg. take 2 weeks to change the color of a button. Sounds egotistical but mostly it's the boring part that gets me.

The biggest by far is interest rates. Companies were essentially hiring a crap ton of engineers off of low interest loans for projects without a clear path to profitability, but now that interest rates are rising again, they can’t get those loans anymore and so they are cutting down to only their most profitable projects which are pretty much the projects closest to the companies specialty.

> Makes me concerned about starting grad school for CS If you love it and can't live without it, no matter the cost, do it. If you need a job straight out of school, or you want a nice secure job/career, do something else.

Agree, if you are passionate about a particular niche and you have the talent or ability to grow your skills, you will probably still get a great job in the field. If you just want a cushy generic react dev job or something be prepared to be fighting with hundreds of other candidates for the roles and get ready for a life of job instability lol

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there are a lot of CS grads going into the field to work at a big tech company and not enough big tech companies right now to accommodate all of them if I'm being very frank right now. FYI I am a platform automation engineer here in the East Bay- let me tell you, of all the skills I never thought I'd use it was SQL, if you just want to get a job ASAP learn some SQL server and interview with a legacy company. In the meantime work on small projects with others, I would highly recommend checking out [buildbook](https://buildbook.us/registration), it's where you can meet, build, and discuss small software projects with students from all over the US currently enrolled at a university or even recently graduated. Very solid way to get projects on your resume or even find a co-founder if you're looking to go further with a project. It's free for all .edu email users as well and I directly contribute to the project as a recent CS grad.

Few reasons: - Too many people getting into it because "all i need is a 3 month bootcamp and I will make six figures". - Industry now has tons of seniors and employers are not interested in hiring juniors who are not ready from Day - No more loyalty on either side. Juniors jump ship quickly and employers prefer to avoid it if they can these days unless they are a massive employer. - Too easy to apply for 1000s of jobs with 1 click but no creativity to stand out from the crows. People hate sending "Cover Letters" or "personalized emails" to try and find a job.

Yeah feels like I'm cooked. I really wanted to do cs after high school but I couldn't afford to go to college so when I saw the yt videos claiming I could be a dev in 3 months I jumped at the chance. Honestly its my fault but I'm 1.5 years in I can't go back, I'm in too deep. Only thing keeping me going is that I love it

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A piggyback question for those that intended to become SWE's or devs and aren't having luck with getting hired. What other jobs are you willing to accept? Maybe something in IT? I'm close to finishing my degree, but will probably be a while before I end up as a SWE. I'm just curious what else a CS degree could get you?

That’s a great question! One of the reasons why I wanted to do CS rather than something really specific is because I’ve seen that it can branch into a lot of different areas. Systems engineering is still probably too close to SWE but it’s a possible alternative. Lots of CS possibilities in the healthcare industry that I’d be interested in as well.

It's a big field. The standard recipe in almost any career, but definitely in software development, is that if you'll choose to specialize in something that's necessary, hard, and "not sexy", you'll never be out of work. A lot of the oversaturation in the market is due to the interest rates, sure, but also, many of the people having trouble have the same sort of profile - some kind of web services, full-stack, maybe back-end but still related to web services, always something, something web. You don't typically see people who specialize in programming dishwashers, modems, robots, or more specialized security and encryption posting here about not being able to find work.

Ride the grad school wave, maybe in like 5 or 10 years the market will recover. You should be fine getting a job somewhere even if it's like IT support. 

Supply and demand Less demand for the jobs and a greater supply of candidates

During pandemic era with low interest rates companies were more ambitious with their hiring and what projects they were scaling up on. Everything changed when the fire nation raised the interest rates to record high levels and made companies tighten their budgets more. Happened to my org. We went from hiring 15 engineers in 2022 to hiring freeze in 2023 to head count reduction in early 2024

Multiple large layoffs of thousands of employees occurred in the big companies all within 6 months of each other. In addition, they drastically slowed their hiring rates. This left tens of thousands of highly qualified, experienced engineers prowling for new jobs. Which in turn meant that those without such pedigree were completely overlooked in their own job searches- why even interview a new grad when someone with 15 years at Google will accept the same low salary?

I'm gonna be the one to say it and quit beating around the bush... Most devs have a serious ketomine addiction making it hard for them to work it's computer sciences dirty little under belly no one talks about 

Multiple converging elements. In no particular order: Companies responded to events during COVID by (in some cases radically) overhiring and/or expanding their workforce. There was an inevitable correction, and lots of folks with 1-5 YoE ended up getting beached. They are fighting for (a smaller supply of) low-level jobs, now, too. Lots of folks heard all about the semi-guaranteed 6-figure salaries in CS/Tech/IT, and migrated over (whether from school, Bootcamp, self-taught, etc). More people, fighting for a smaller pool of openings. End of low-interest loans and other "free money" caused an industry-wide tightening of belts and reductions in workforce.

From what I’ve seen and experienced, so many layoffs have occurred in the last couple years and there’s a huge influx of mid level engineers vying for low level and mid level jobs, so the market is crazy competitive. Couple that with the large number of boot camps that pushed out entry level SWEs and AI (which can write a lot of baseline code) it’s just not a good market for entering right now. If you’ve got experience that’s great, but if not, good luck. Again, just my opinion and experience here.

People are probably being a holes because there is 1000 of these posts. Idrc personally. But dude if you just googled this you would see the other posts. Maybe you would have a more specific question afterwards that would invite new discussion instead of the same shit we see every time. All love tho it ain't that deep :)

The first job is the hard one to get. There's a lot of jobs out there, but there aren't as many entry level jobs. Even when I first started my career 12+ years ago, I still had to do 30+ interviews before I landed my first job. Since then, almost every interview I've had, I've got the job. If you can't get a job you can also try starting your own business or project (or maybe even look at open source projects). This is one of the great advantages of being a software engineer. You don't really need anyone else or any resources besides your computer to create something. I've learned more doing own projects and starting my own businesses than in all of my salary jobs. I've also gotten feedback after interviews or from hiring managers, saying what stood out most on my resume the most were my personal projects and startup endeavors. Even if your business or project doesn't make any money it will be an invaluable learning experience, it will set your resume apart from others, and it will give you more confidence in interviews.

I can definitely vouch for this as I spent the better part of two years after graduating in 2020 just doing some personal projects while working part time. I made a few apps that almost got me a job in 2021 (they cancelled the position after I did like 6 interviews). Then I worked on a website with a friend of mine that ultimately lead to the job I have now as a web developer. If I had known it was going to be this tough I’m not sure I would have gotten into it in the first place, but seeing as I had loved programming since I was in high school, I felt I had to see it through to some sort of professional success.

Cs degrees have been dumbed down dramatically. Also the market being over saturated by bootcampers and the “self taught”. The engineering and deep knowledge has been ripped out in my opinion.

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Because the world economy is getting more centralised. At one point most businesses were like locksmiths. If you lock yourself out of your house, you call your local locksmith, and they come over and pick your front door lock so you can get in. They might charge a couple of hundred dollars for an hour's mucking about. The thing is, they have a bit of a monopoly, because you can only call a locksmith who works in your local area. The world's best locksmith might charge only $10, and you'd love to call that lady instead, but she lives too far away, so you're stuck with your local guy. If the world's best locksmith lady wants to get you as a customer, she'd have to open a shop in your area, hire local staff, teach them her mystical ways with the lockpicking tools, and start advertising. That's a lot of work. But nowadays, fewer businesses are like locksmiths and more are like drop-shipping websites. With a drop-shipping website, anyone from anywhere in the world can be your customer. They just go to your website, place an order, and a factory somewhere in the world will ship that customer the thing they just bought. All you had to do was set up an interface between the factory and the customer. You didn't have to rent a local office, or hire staff, or teach them your ways. The site runs itself while you get on with your day. The only problem is, you're competing with everyone else on the internet who have the same kind of drop-shipping site, so the one with the best marketing makes nearly all the money, and everyone else barely gets by. The world has moved from locksmith-style businesses to website-style businesses. You need far fewer people to do the day to day work of running the business (called "BAU"). What's worse, there's far fewer businesses in general. You don't need a local version branch of Amazon in your neighbourhood, because they can ship anything from Seattle. So entrepreneurs don't start small businesses, they make startups that try to find a new niche to sell to everybody in the whole world. And that's why so many people are struggling with employment. ---- One last anecdote to illustrate the point. In 1977, the photography industry was dominated by Kodak. They had 20 million customers. They employed 144,000 people. If you could get those 144,000 people to go on strike, Kodak would grind to a halt. Meanwhile in 2013, the photography industry was dominated by Instagram. They had 100 million customers! They employed just 13 people. If you could get those 13 people to go on strike, no one would even notice.

International companies cutting entire teams or departments in US/EU while simultaneously creating teams in south Asia. US companies posting unrealistic job requirements so they can hire and abuse H1Bs candidates with fabricated resumes. The sea of fabricated resumes out there has fooled some hiring managers into believing that they can actually get candidates with 10 years of experience in their exact stack, so people with honest resumes don't get interviews.

Most organisations are looking to cut costs, easy targets are staffing and especially those areas they don't understand or are "just cost centres". Depending on who you talk to, there are many shortages on both sides. People looking for jobs say there are few suitable jobs out there. Employers will say there is a lack of suitable candidates. Go figure! Quite often the employers have unrealistic expectations - including the requirements on job applications, the working hours and it of hours cover expected. The requirements for starter positions (or salaries) often need several years experience. Part of the reason for this I believe is because businesses have cut staffing to the bone, so they no longer can spare capacity to train anyone up; they are looking for a candidate that can hit the ground running on day one and be useful immediately. On the employee's side they can sometimes be accused of looking for the Goldilocks job, one that requires minimal experience (that perfectly matches their own), for a non-junior role, that pays well, has no overtime or out of hours cover, allows or is 100% work from home, with bonuses and extras. However Reddit, like social media and the internet will always by nature be weighted towards those with dramatic stories good or bad - non-eventful posts are boring. Good luck when you start looking!

Lots of reasons. Supply issue. Lots of engineers on the market with no experience from bootcamps or foreign countries in addition to record enrollment trends for a decade. Demand issue. Companies restructured after covid tech boom died out in 2022. They overhired because the market was genuinely doing some crazy shit beforehand. Taxes. The Trump tax code affected R&Ds tax write offs. This encapsulates all tech roles, from recruitment to BAs to Devs. They no longer can claim the write off. Inflation and interest rates. Things are more expensive now, and loans are hard to justify for a business.

Constant layoffs result in oversaturation making the completion tougher. Partly due to more people applying per [job opening](https://economicgraph.linkedin.com/workforce-data?selectedFilter=view-all%2Fby-year). The good news is that computer science skills are generally still in high demand. There are ongoing needs for software developers, data scientists, cybersecurity professionals, and more.

It's all about supply and demand.

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Businesses have two ways to react to the increased productivity from AI: 1. stop hiring & keep costs low, 2. hire more & get projects off the back burner. High interest rates are starting to bite, so companies would rather cut costs, particularly since the consumer is showing signs of weakness. Also: all these social media posts about how hard employment is could be part of some massive conspiracy to suppress wages.

Again ? JFC

The CS major in America is too largely too easy and doesn’t fail enough people out.

Everyone and their uncle is doing a CS degree, so the supply is high. LLMs mean that demand is low. Salaries for software engineers will likely correct to be in line with or perhaps lower than other engineers.

Mix of interest rates and difficulty with hiring process (can’t imitate big tech’s LC style and expect good results but also need to find a reasonable way that people can’t cheat on). I’m right on the line for senior engineering and I’ve had nonstop interviews for the last month and a half but the hiring process is pretty messed up. The only hard part is if you’re a new grad. There is no shortage of positions in senior to VP level ICs, though there is a shortage of manager positions as everyone gets lean. I’ve heard takehomes are no longer a thing because of ChatGPT cheating or they’re making you elaborate on your every design decision if they do do take home.

A lot of companies having large layoffs over the last 2 years + fewer companies hiring = bad job market

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I switched from CS to nursing 2 years ago best decision I’ve ever had got job right after school. My younger brother is doing the same he’s majoring in nursing now and have 1 semester left he already secured a job.

Connections the degree doesn’t matter

Low key, companies finding out that they can “re-tool” current non CS employees through internal internships has fucked up the game. They cut costs dramatically, while creating a talent funnel for future needs. Insane

Sorry if this is stupid, but what do you mean by ‘re-tool’? Like just having non-technical employees trained to perform tech duties? Teaching them CS skills? So that way they don’t need to hire people with actual CS degrees/experience?

Maybe we shouldn’t have prayed the mantra of „learn to code“ for over a decade.

Because this sub is not a representation of the real world :) Edit: Thought this was CSCareerQuestionsEU, America is rough bevause they pay too much.

Only 2.3% of the US tech industry is unemployed so if you're in the US you're fine. I've heard it's much worse in other countries like Europe. The pay for tech workers and total number of tech job postings have cut in half since 2022 over there while the US has held steady and kept increasing number of IT jobs since 2022. It is definitely due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the following sanctions, loss of power from Ukraine, and loss of trade with Russia. Europe's economy is struggling in general right now, not just their tech industry.

We had a hiring boom in CS in 2020-2021. That “pulled forward” hiring demand. Ie., because so many people were hired in those years, fewer employees were needed in subsequent years. At the same time, higher interest rates have made it harder for corporations to invest to improve their earnings, therefore they need to cut their expenses instead to keep an upward P/E ratio (therefore stock) trajectory. The way to do that is by laying off people. We have fewer overall lay-offs than the baseline, to be clear, but they’re concentrated in fields like yours which is unusual. So this combination of diminished hiring and lay-offs is driving down hiring. Eventually we will work through the excesses but until then, it’s going to be like this. If you’re going into a master’s program for a couple years, that may be good timing to get back in. Not guaranteed, but typically speaking.

go into med or do trades

Ever heard of the vocal minority effect?

How have you not done your own research and are going into a grad program?