Are there that many good-paying jobs remaining within the tech industry that they can re-shuffle to? Are people finding placement? Are coders now competing for less-technical jobs as well?
I've heard stories of recruiters who were seeing 1 resume per week now seeing 300 resumes per week, but I'm not noticing any sentiment of widespread panic on HN or even Reddit.
For FAANG-level engineering salaries, the answer is largely no, perhaps save some very specific areas like finance or extremely hot AI prospects.
There is going to be a broad leveling of engineering salaries in my opinion. The engineer with 8-10 years experience making north of 500k at FAANGs is largely going away. Of course, a big part of that is due to equity values not skyrocketing every year. And of course with FAANG-level salaries going down, lots of other companies will feel less pressure to compete.
For engineers, I think a large number of those who were laid off will have difficulty replacing their level of salary for some time. I think that the past 10-ish years, with rock bottom interest rates, were really a "once in a lifetime" chance for non-managerial employees to make as much compensation as they did (again, broadly).
If those salaries go away, so will the talent. These workers will start new tech companies that either eat away at market segments or end up costing large sums to acquire. You're right that it may take time to replace the salary in the short term.
Sure, some talent will leave and start new companies, but on the whole I think hardly any of them will ever be able to match top-level FAANG compensation from the 2010-2020 period. Again, there will be some outliers, but even then I think the number of outliers will be small. For example, look at AI. A lot of people freaking out the most right now are people in other areas of AI who are realizing that all of their work is being completely obviated by LLMs.
Like most US tech workers, I was getting paid comfortably, but nowhere near the level of FAANG/fintech/top startups. I took a small pay increase with this new job.
I've got friends who were part of the FAANG layoffs who have been struggling because they only want to work at FAANG or top tier fintech/startups. That said, they are also not trying too hard due to generous severance.
I can tell you that candidate expectations have changed a lot in recent months.
For a while we had a lot of candidates applying who wanted to stretch the interview process out to 2-3 months so they could shop around, compare offers, then negotiate up as much as they could. Candidates would frequently disappear from the interview pipeline or go weeks between following up.
Now that quality of resumes we receive has increased dramatically. Applicants are much more responsive and are making it clear that they're willing to do anything, as opposed to holding out for their dream job.
Meanwhile my employer is celebrating the latest salary comp data showing that industry-wide compensation has declined sharply.
There are still jobs out there, but it's no longer easy to put in a little effort and find a good job. It's now a competition.
Any pointers?
Many interviewers can recognize when you don't have many options. The more options you have, the more confident you'll be.
Don't take rejections personally. If you're not getting rejected a lot, you're aiming too low. You should be getting rejected frequently! Use it to hone your search.
I took the black pill. Maybe I can find wisdom in past professions' cataclysms, like ice harvesters and milk delivery.
Unless we invent an actual superintelligence, in which case, no humans will be needed for work ever again and you will either live out your days in some kind of early retirement paradise or be fighting over the last can of cat food.
Unfortunately that's not the norm, but I find branding yourself in that way can at least help overcome this challenge in the hiring process (if you get past the screener that only looks at these filters that is)
The problem with hiring from the ivies is these are people who got into ivies. They know how to game the system.
Fwiw those I do know that've been laid off have gone travelling/career break (severance helps here) or pivoted (all from HR, none from engineering).
There are lots of tech openings these days in non tech businesses. Of course these don’t pay the top of the market salaries.
I don’t look at LinkedIn much most of the time but I do try to connect with most of the people I work with, and I am nice to recruiters. I generally rely on my network and recruiter outreach for most of my jobs, can’t remember the last time I did a cold application.
For the past few years there’s been a layer of bottom feeder recruiters who were terrible about phone and LinkedIn spam. They made previous job hunts unpleasant. Nowhere to be found this time around, wonder where those people went.
The quality roles are still there but maybe 25-50% less abundant in terms of cold outreach from recruiters.
For someone still employed this translates to a very manageable interviewing pace that probably leads to better results in the end.
If I were unemployed I might be more anxious since you probably can’t do 3-4 interviews a day without hustling quite a bit. The pace reminds me a lot of my experience interviewing for mid-level roles a few years back, before I made senior.
Overall take, the bottom has definitely not dropped out of the market. Yes FAANG comp is less available than it used to be, but the just-below level isn’t too hard to find, and even the FAANGs are still hiring in key areas. I expect a ramp-up late this year/early next once the operational cracks start to show from layoffs and attrition.
Whether there are 250k open positions at suitably-high levels is less clear, but there are more than twice that many open positions.
Of course, people used to making $300k+ might balk at positions offering half that or even less, but they're out there.
I think there is an assumption that all of the layoffs have been engineers or engineers, designers, and product people, but a huge chunk of them have been in support roles that are less needed without big hiring demands.
If companies are cutting travel and expense budgets, that means you can cut accounting staff. If you are largely not hiring, you can cut recruitment staff. Etc., etc., etc.
LMAO no. Admittedly I have been out of the job hunting circus for a decade, but the number of positions I've applied for in the past few months that have resulted in a first interview is laughable. Recruiters are still useless and such an active waste of my time I don't even reply to them any more.
I'm seemingly having better luck these days getting freelance contracts through non-standard avenues (but I'm holding off from celebrating as I'm still negotiating and haven't signed anyone just yet)
The company I work for, a tier 2 or 3 company for tech, depending on your perspective is still hiring, although mostly not in the U.S. But if more U.S. talent becomes available at more reasonable rates, we might do more hiring here.
Seems like companies are focusing on cutting folks that don't contribute (code, reports, something tangible) directly to revenue streams.
> Seems like companies are focusing on cutting folks that don't contribute (code, reports, something tangible) directly to revenue streams.
Follow from this?
> more on the senior/higher paid side of things
Are you implying that every single senior+ person you know who got cut was worthless? Because generally, the more senior the more you contribute to a company’s bottom line.
Happy to be wrong here.
I suspect anyone with a decent network is fine. If you are applying through portals though, the competition is steep.
A year ago I submitted to one job post and got a full round of interviews from it, which ultimately I decided wasn't a fit.
Over the past two weeks I've submitted my resume to 80+ jobs, and so far have had a handful of declines and no interviews.
So, yeah, it's a different market than it was, for sure.
I don't think we'll ever be there yet. Tech people are still one of the richest in the US and the Earth.
That's because companies announce layoffs but they usually don't announce mass hiring.
While cloud sectors are laying off, healthcare and defense are hiring tons right now
There is still plenty of work to find, but it all depends on how much people built their lives around their income level