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A ‘demoralizing' trend has computer science grads out of work — even minimum wage jobs. Are 6-figure tech careers over? (www.yahoo.com)
submitted 3 weeks ago by chobeat@lemmy.ml to c/technology@hexbear.net
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[–] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 60 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

its bad, but this also happened in the late 90s with the dotcom bust. people thought similar things because so many high salary tech jobs were laid off. it wasn't just the bubble bursting, it was capital "discovering" outsourcing could cover their technical needs at a fraction of the cost.

that was the dominant vibe when i was in school, and it soured a lot of interest in tech as a secure/stable profession at the time.

this is the nature of capital and in my opinion, the only real maneuver to mitigate it (besides insurrection) is to not put all your skill/knowledge/development points just into tech. pair it with something you have an interest in (medicine/public health, education, etc) and get a formal credential in that field. then you're not just a tech person, you're a [the other thing] with advanced technical skills who can communicate with the jargon, see the broader context, and propose solutions.

narrow, singular specialization is a risky gamble. some people absolutely make it work and bank, but i think they're the exception over time with these cyclical contractions.

[–] quarrk@hexbear.net 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I’ve considered doing exactly that, so good to hear it’s not a bad idea. Feel insane wanting to switch things up when I have a job in this kind of job market, but I also cant imagine doing this until I retire.

[–] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 11 points 3 weeks ago

i sort of accidentally did it after being burnt out from ~6 years in IT, mostly helpdesking/repair/network integration/sysadmin. i lost my shit and did scut work on farms for some years, then went to school for ag, yadda yadda yadda. the tech skills never really go away, because in my new line it would always get around that i could fix tech shit, recommend solutions, and muddle my way through learning new/confusing technologies being adopted. it gave me a foot in the door everywhere, because every org has tech debt. especially non profits, but they can rarely afford a full-time IT person who only does that. everybody doing weird shit needs multidiscipline flex players, not specialists.

the last two times i have felt "stuck" by an employer being unreasonable, within 6 months of starting a job search i get an offer from a place i want to work and they treat me like a warlock who has blended two oppositional schools of magic.

as a mostly monolingual anglo dumbass, i imagine its how truly multilingual codeswitchers feel in a dysfunctional border region or some colonial diaspora.zone.

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 58 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

This is what happens when planning in an economy is left up to price signals rather than actual scheduling.

You get cycles of

High commodity price -> High investment -> High production -> Low price

And the frequency of the cycle is largely based on the time it takes to go from investment to production (so 4-6 years for college graduation).

In any rational economy, the number of seats available at colleges would have been pre-proportioned based on projected future demand given the economic plan.

[–] 7bicycles@hexbear.net 33 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle

the most efficient way to allocate ressources

Keynes as a capitalist even got this and suggested to save some money in boom times and spend it in the downfall but anything other than line go up is heresy now

[–] DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net 9 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, even other capitalists have criticized this business as usual: Keynesian and Georgism in particular. I don’t agree with either group, but they’re a lot more pleasant to speak with and debate than pure hogs.

Even the whole “porky gets the money and his consumption will create jobs” tacitly endorses that demand drives growth. Thus making income inequality undesirable because rich people underconsume.

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 8 points 3 weeks ago

I thought you edited the link to "pork cycle" to mock the capitalists, but no, reality itself has made fools of the porkies.

[–] beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org 17 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

It'll swing back. It's not like we're going to stop needing software, and frankly the software is out there is kind of crap and needs work.

But important lesson for people thinking about getting into the field is to not do it for the money. Do it because you love it.

Supply will fall, demand will rise, salaries will increase, supply will rise, there will be a crash, demand will fall, salaries will fall, supply will fall...

[–] NuraShiny@hexbear.net 21 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

And with each bust in the cycle, conditions for workers will get worse, while billionaires get ever richer, a process not at all offset by the boom cycles, because clawing back concessions is way harder then accepting them cuz you'd starve otherwise.

The best system at work. No way could there be a better one.

[–] DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net 7 points 3 weeks ago

Nothing teaches you quite like ‘jobs are a concession porky hates making’ than being a teenager looking for your first job.

[–] beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 3 weeks ago

Working for a publicly-traded company will always make this as bad as possible. People sometimes have better luck with private companies which aren't beholden to shareholder value.

[–] homhom9000@hexbear.net 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't think it'll bounce back to the same levels as before. Big wigs are content with good enough (Brian Merchant wrote about this) especially since it's cheaper, so less developers implementing good enough solutions.

[–] beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 3 weeks ago

We had a student graduate and take a job out the gate for $430k about 3 years ago. With a BS. Just an insane number equivalent to $250k in 2001, a number none of my peers were near at the time.

Large salaries like that are certainly a sign of unhealth, and this industry likes to push itself there periodically.

So maybe it doesn't get back to that point, but I suspect it will return to previous normal levels. TBH, though, I think it will someday go insane again.

[–] nfreak@lemmy.ml 55 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

The whole industry is fucked. I had a job lined up before I even graduated back in 2015. Held it strong for nearly a decade and moved up to a senior dev role before the company made a huge shift and decided to split our team up, moving half of us to a new product with a completely different tech stack and workflow and 0 training. Went about as well as expected, and all of us from my old team got let go with absolutely no warning as a result. Apparently these days they're 100% focused on genAI garbage so even though it's been a few years I'm excited to check glassdoor when that bubble finally bursts.

Trying to get back into dev was a nightmare too. Absurd leetcode puzzles with no practical value, interviewers who clearly had no idea what they were talking about but had the confidence of a politician, AI bullshit everywhere, the works - all while being bombarded with news about constant layoffs at nearly every company in the industry.

I ended up taking an IT support role for half my old salary instead because I just could not be fucked to deal with the state of this industry today. It went to hell SO fast. I don't know of a single recent graduate who had a job lined up out the the door like almost my entire graduating class did, and no one I know who's been laid off or let go has gotten back into similar positions at all.

[–] zipper@hexbear.net 33 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I don't know of a single recent graduate who had a job lined up out the the door like almost my entire graduating class did

i remember back in the late 2010s software dev was pushed like hell to anyone who was listening. "oh yea bro if you go into compsci you'll get six figures right out of the gate bro don't worry about the competition bro" and at the time it was true. when i graduated the bubble was in the middle of popping so i was still fine. nowadays things have gotten so bad that you'll be lucky to get a dead end IT job after 200 applications. obviously the field will never fully disappear but i expect it to shrink significantly before it gets any better.

[–] nfreak@lemmy.ml 16 points 3 weeks ago

Yeppp I fell right into it during that timeframe. In retrospect I should've gone into IT from the beginning and went for like a sysadmin role somewhere, that's much more aligned with my interests anyway. If I wanted to stick with dev work I should've left that company ages ago to move somewhere more modern instead of building my entire skillset off an ancient outdated monolith.

[–] Lerios@hexbear.net 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

yeah i have a friend who was (at the time) undiagnosedly majorly depressed, so he just idly floated along when his family pushed him into compsci for the money. he struggled through a degree he hated in a topic he wasn't passionate about to wind up in an industry that can't even employ him. i know a lot of compsci grads. shits bleak

[–] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 5 points 3 weeks ago

Oh hey was that me?

(No it was not because I went "fuck this shit is boring" and switched to painting my junior year).

[–] bobs_guns@lemmygrad.ml 20 points 3 weeks ago

The only worse thing than a tech job doing something frivolous or deadly (95% of tech jobs BTW) is doing these obtuse leetcode problems.

The companies that do the most leetcode are by far the least innovative and the most mired in bureaucracy. Think about Meta, who asks you to do two medium Leetcodes in 40 minutes. They spent $60 million on their shit version of VRChat and Zucc pledged to spend $600 million on his AI bullshit that doesn't even work most of the time, especially for anything serious. Meanwhile Facebook, their flagship product, is a slop-infested Nazi site, or maybe a Nazi-infested slop site, even more than it was in the past.

Meanwhile one of my friends works for a virtual power plant company. Sounds important, right? It's a company that automatically pays Bitcoin miners to stop mining Bitcoin when the price of electricity rises corresponding with demand peaks. Essentially half-solving a problem that was caused by tech in the first place! The definition of a bullshit job!

I expect hiring will come back only after the bubble pops and interest rates are dropped to try to save the economy. Either that or if the corporations are given tax breaks. Of course at that point the prosperity of tech workers will come at the expense of everyone else.

[–] Hexamerous@hexbear.net 44 points 3 weeks ago

Just learn2cook.

[–] zipper@hexbear.net 35 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

my field (cybersecurity) is absolutely fried. i have no idea how to proceed considering the job market. thank fuck i'm not unemployed but i am afraid for my future in the industry. my only hope is quantum cybersec but i have no clue where to learn it.

[–] MayoPete@hexbear.net 19 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's gonna be so funny when these folks go blackhat and take down all of these vibecoded websites that AI pumps out.

[–] zipper@hexbear.net 7 points 3 weeks ago

i'd argue that's more grey-hat territory. i do a lot of bug bounties as a side hustle but i don't wanna devote my time to pentesting some dogshit grok-written website. i could use that time to read theory instead (the theory of the leisure class plug btw)

[–] sniper_culture@hexbear.net 30 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Yeah it's been happening for a couple three years now. I was a a UI engineer for 12 years, got laid off after training a team of Serbians to do my job, couldn't find work for a year and a half and ended up switching career paths entirely.

[–] segfault11@hexbear.net 15 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

what did you end up doing instead?

[–] sniper_culture@hexbear.net 2 points 3 weeks ago

paralegal

[–] SickSemper@hexbear.net 13 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

This (and the post in general) sounds eerily familiar to the current state of filmmaking in America. To anyone pivoting from compsci, DO NOT go into any portion of movie/tv production/postproduction just because they have a union

[–] DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net 13 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Is it just me or is this just generally the attitude the porks push on Americans?

porky-happy: “Your dream is to work a job? Why? The browns and my AI will do the work for you! You should all become self-employed plumbers! Everyone should be a little individual businessman and nothing else!”

[–] picklemeister@hexbear.net 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

yes, because it realigns the worker into a petite bourgeois class position unless/until they are reproletarianized by the bourgeoisie proper. home/land ownership as the primary means of developing wealth serves a similar purpose as does tying retirement to stonks-up

[–] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 29 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Must Read

Thanks to Jeff Bezos, you can now become a landlord for as little as $100 — and no, you don't have to deal with tenants or fix freezers. Here's how

stalin-gun-1stalin-gun-2

[–] DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net 17 points 3 weeks ago

“Thanks to porky, you can be a porky too! Just join this pyramid scheme and do some fancy-schmancy WASPy gambling!”

Nice economy we have here.

[–] fuckiforgotmypasswor@hexbear.net 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

happy cakeday Tanukichan <3

[–] valium_aggelein@hexbear.net 28 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I want to get out of this industry so fucking bad but I don’t know HOW. I do also have a music degree but that’s even less useful for $$ haha

[–] Juice@midwest.social 14 points 3 weeks ago

looks at commie PFP the left needs culture sooo fucking bad. Do you have any recordings?

[–] LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 9 points 3 weeks ago

My sous chef has a music degree

[–] BodyBySisyphus@hexbear.net 27 points 3 weeks ago

Looks like they should just reskill and pursue careers in the sciences instead.

Wait a sec, I've got a note here from my producer.

Oh dear, I've got some unfortunate news to share.

[–] PurrLure@hexbear.net 22 points 3 weeks ago

MUST READ "Thanks to Jeff Bezos, you can now become a landlord for as little as $100 — and no, you don't have to deal with tenants or fix freezers. Here's how"

Holy shit Yahoo news wtf landlord-spotted

[–] quarrk@hexbear.net 20 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It’s kinda cute when journalists use quaint terms like “6 figures” that made sense in the 90s but are now almost meaningless. $100k today is equivalent to only $73k just ten years ago. About half in 2000 dollars. Six figures isn’t anything near wealthy anymore, especially in high COL areas.

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 8 points 3 weeks ago

Taxes and rent and childcare will squeeze anyone earning low 6-figures. A significant portion of them don't even count as middle class anymore. Their main sources of property (a house and college degree) no longer confer them a huge advantage (mortgages, degree dilution, student debt).

I believe that computer scientists and such people cam become huge masses of radicalised workers under the right circumstances. They are educated, being dispossessed and computer science offers elegant solutions for planning an economy.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Good lol the CS majors who clearly dont give af about computers and are just in it for the money are such an annoying crowd. Hope there will be fewer of them from now on.

[–] Biggay@hexbear.net 3 points 3 weeks ago

There is a very prevalent and similar issue with doctors

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 0 points 3 weeks ago

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