Now is the time to:-
- Get your resume up-to-date
- Keep on top of friends/ex-colleagues who are at other companies still hiring
- Be ready (to move out of state, start your own gig, etc.)
The number of engineers that know how to write a basic java or ruby/node/go web service, some frontend, and basics of using a RDBMS getting half a mil TC is quite high in the bay. However, they lack the background to really advance a company's technical direction, reduce major inefficiencies, or handle problems of scale in a rigorous manner. It's a trend I see having interacted with engineers of all levels at a large number of silicon valley companies.
With the era of kubernetes and virtually unlimited cloud hardware on-demand, any college grad can stand up dozens of microservices quickly and satisfy almost any consumer or enterprise product's requirements by throwing money at the problem. To some degree, it's worse at FANGs given how the tooling has essentially narrowed most engineer's focuses to just writing application logic and abstracting everything else away. For these companies, it's effectively cheaper to run thousands of extremely inefficient microservices than try to consolidate the architecture into something leaner and more efficient. Sadly, smaller companies try to emulate this pattern and end up burning piles of VC cash to build something that really requires a fraction of the compute or engineering resources.
What this ultimately means is most "engineers" truly are replaceable, lack depth in understanding, and are nothing more than code monkeys. It's about time we see a market correction.
The high salary bonanza may be over, but work still seems plentiful.
This kind of recession plays to our skills.
The .com bust was really the last time there was a huge wave of layoffs in the software industry. I'm glad I was able to go through that early in my career to get perspective. And honestly, at the end of the day I think it was a good thing. It flushed out most the people who didn't give 2 shits about software but saw it as the place to get money. Perhaps another downturn like that is needed.
“I did it for about 10 years, then I took a couple years off to work as a programmer, then got back into selling cars about 2 years ago...”
The industry was snapping up anyone who could spell computer back in the late 90s. It seems less excessive than that in the current/just ended boom.
Are any of them any good?
I am sorry but Uber is just a glorified taxi middleman and I have seen a good enough alternatives in some local markets that blew Uber out of the water.
What does Uber bring to the table if they cant even win in some super small countries?