Tech workers face a new reality as talent wars turn to pink slips

wsj.com

15 points·mfiguiere··9 comments

"Tech worker" is not a very useful term for understanding labor markets. What I'd like to see is a chart of the occupation specific unemployment rate for software developers in the United States. The BLS definitely produces such a time series that should have been updated for October, but I can't seem to find it right now.

https://beta.bls.gov/dataQuery/find?st=0&r=20&q=software+dev...

It pertains to anyone riding the FANG Silicon Valley Bubble created by near Zero interest rates.

I've read this same story weekly for about 4 months now. I'm still getting 2 unsolicited recruiter calls a week. And I'm not even talented...

Off-Topic: For some odd reason, recruiters seem to gravitate towards employed people compared to freshly laid off or unemployed briefly.

On most days, I receive plenty exciting opportunities spamming my inbox but when I was briefly unemployed, my inbox was entirely barren until I started a new job and updated my linkedin. :thoughtful:

Recruiters know that layoffs are often an opportunity to purge the lower-performing employees.

Another thing happening is that a lot of U.S. companies are "friendshoring" to Canada, India, Australia, and Europe, where salaries, in real terms, are somewhere between 25%-50% cheaper for what is effectively the same productivity.

Anecdotally, it appears to be boomtime right now in at least some Canadian tech hubs.

My best guess is that this is being driven by three factors: The collapse of the SV ZIRP bubble, the animus with China, and the exceedingly strong US dollar.

Australia at least is closer to 50-100% cheaper. $150k AUD is a decent senior salary, but the same dev can make almost $200k USD in SF, which is $298k AUD.

100%?

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