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Comment by rsweeney21 | Hacker News Reader

Not directly related to the post, but developers should be aware that developer salaries will likely jump significantly this year.

The VC market is super hot right now - VC firms are being flooded with cash, and they need to deploy it. Companies are raising massive amounts of money at unprecedented valuations. A large chunk of that money is going to hire developers. The recruiting industry is seeing a huge surge in hiring in the past couple of months (source: I run a technical recruiting company (1)).

Because demand and cash available to hire developers has increased significantly in the past few months, but the supply is basically fixed, companies are offering higher salaries to attract talent. They have the cash for it.

Keep in mind that new money raised from investors will raise the value of your stock options, but rarely translates to salary increases for existing employees.

What a time to be a software engineer.

(1) https://www.facet.net

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Great ad. Excited to hear back from you.

What's driving this new surge of cash?

I suppose this https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...

Low interest rates means managers of pensions and other large money managers can't put their money in bonds. They would lose money because the interest rate is lower than inflation.

So they need somewhere else to put it.

Interest rates have been low for quite some time, though.

Maybe it is also driven by perception of overvaluation among publicly traded equities?

well the 10-year treasuries along with other t-bills are rising in yields now ...

I wonder if it has something to do with how tech companies are relatively unaffected by the big sick.

That's not true anymore, the reflation is underway since 2 weeks.

corporate welfare in the form of immense cash injections, forgivable loans, immaterial interest rates, downright lovable tax policy, and an accelerating crap-ton of captured regulation (like lockdowns heavily favoring the largest businesses). all without any structural reform so that that excess isn't hoovered up by the already wealthy.

This is fascinating. It kinda sounds very unstable though. Like how does a pandemic ruptured economy somehow come out looking better than it was pre pandemic?

it looks better because (1) we (in the US) borrowed $6T+ against the future and injected that into the present, with inflation stayed only because the dollar is the international currency (for now) and (2) capital has nowhere to go but into (existing) equities, financial maneuvers, and real estate. it's hard to erode/inflate away more than $6T, even for an economy as misallocated as ours when you have those two features going for you.

i don't think it will be stable long term, but it's been a slow boiling of us largely oblivious amphibians. the froth of unrest we've seen here and there in the last decade is pockets of us frogs realizing something is wrong, but we haven't reached that 25% awareness/action threshold to unlodge us toward a new equilibrium.

Valuations are high. They're competing with SPACs, and no-one wants to miss out

Not likely. The work permit immigration spigots have opened up again with new administration relaxing previous constraints. My vendors Cognizant, Wipro and TCS are very excited for lots of contract work in SV. We can come back and revisit this comment at the end of the year. The wages will barely budge.

do you think that these hot startups like Stripe etc are hiring consultants from the likes of Cognizant, Wipro, and TCS?

With Stripe's new RSU policy (almost looking like fixed TC but worse with delayed granting) I wonder who they are trying to attract.

yeah, plus they have sort of earned a reputation for being a bit of an intense place to work, quick to fire people who fall behind. Idk if that kind of stress is worth it.

So (sadly) in a way all companies wear that as a badge of honor and a way to filter for "culture fit"!

I mean, if I were in a slightly different point in my life, I might be willing to grind out long hours for a year or three if I thought I was going to come out the other end a multi millionaire.

But the way they structure the RSUs makes that way harder, it kinda feels like I might as well wait for IPO and buy shares then.

Lack of job security is big too, but I guess that's to be expected at any startup.

It's not difficult to write better solutions than the people who works for the WICS companies write. No offense to those working there - but work conditions like what are usually described there are not helpful for writing good solutions.

I don't disagree with what you're saying here but I don't think it contradicts the OP. Wipro etc. occupy a different corner of the tech jobs market than VC-funded startups do.

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