I think it's fair to say that product owners and UI designers are tech workers too, but maybe the issue is that "tech industry/worker" is way too broad of a term. Especially when a lot of these roles are extremely new to humanity (engineering and doctor/healer have been around for thousands of years whereas a marketer is barely over a 100 years old).
This suggests you may be off by a few millenia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_marketing
I lean towards the "people have been people since there were people" side of the debate and assume there has been marketing since at least the invention of agriculture and its resultant ability to allow humans to make a living doing something other than calorie acquisition.
But the examples in your wiki page show just that, really neat stuff. Thanks for sharing.
I don't understand the reasoning behind it beyond blatant ignorance, or perhaps that they have a dislike for silicon valley types and get satisfaction out of demeaning the job role in some way by making engineers out to be as "easily dispensable" as everyone else. It's bizarre. I guess, whatever generates the most clicks.
> The latest round of layoffs at Facebook parent company Meta is impacting workers in core technical roles like data scientists and software engineers — positions once thought to be beyond reproach.
https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/21/23692515/tech-worke...
They are pivoting hard from VR to AI.
Artificial Life.
Zero of these people have been let go because of ai yet vox is peddling this myth. How long until vox takes vice’s path?
The market is still incredibly strong for SV caliber devs, and I see no signal it's going to slow down. If anything, it kept compensation for engineers from cratering by propping up the stocks.
[0] https://interviewing.io/blog/2022-layoffs-engineers-vs-other...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-24/tech-layo...
[2] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3690309/about-those-te...
[3] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-03-0...
[4] https://techreport.com/news/3493451/microsoft-layoffs-ethics...
Perhaps if you're comparing it to other industries, but compared to tech's own (recent) past, it's most definitely not "incredibly strong".
Not trying to be snarky, but have you actively searched for a role recently, say in the last 2 months or so? Recruiters reach out far less frequently now on LinkedIn, the common theme even among many experienced engineers these days is instant rejections, or if not that, then being rejected after goin through the final round. Very few are able to land well paying, interesting roles within weeks (or a month at most) of starting their search like they were able to even as recently as a year ago.
It's still possible to find work, but you'll quite likely have to accept a lateral move (at best) or accept a pay cut these days if you've been laid off.
That's not different than pre-layoffs.
The overwhelming majority of applicants are not qualified, or are "tech adjacent" applying for SWE to try to get "a foot in the door" (I kid you not, it happens).
Because class warfare and hate drive clicks and reads. Now who else to hate if not those members of society that earned what should be normal pay? Isnt that more entertaining than hating on those who earn billions, pay little tax, drive inflation up and make us poorer by the day?
You know, the good old pity worker against worker.
As a PM, these days never existed. All of the high TC PMs are technical PMs, like myself, who have an engineering background. I was in Eng for more than a decade before I became a PM. MBAs turned PMs never commanded as high of compensation as technical PMs as ICs at any tech company. Technical PMs are in the same salary bands as Eng, non-technical PMs are generally 1 level or half step below in the bands.
There's way too many people that get their impression about what PMs do from "Day in the Life" TikTok videos made by non-technical associate PMs who are a couple years out of college and basically doing the easiest pieces of things.
But generally, salaries at tech companies weren't as high then. My salary in the late 80s as a PM with engineering work experience and a couple of masters degrees was the equivalent of about $120K today in a major tech hub.
This is pretty much the same now. I am on a ~40 person Product team and only a small number of people do not have a technical background. The vast majority of IC PMs at higher seniority have a technical background. Most MBAs you meet in tech companies are people who were technical and went back to school, although there are a few PMs that are more focused on business analysis and marketing side (sometimes categorized as PMMs or Outbound PMs in some companies) and these folks tend to be less technical, but also doing less technical work, so that's perfectly okay.
I'm curious how representative that sample is.
A few months ago the AI startup I worked at pivoted and laid off 15%. AFAIK the majority of us, all very technical, are still looking for work.
Note: My situation may be a little niche. I live in the middle-of-nowhere, USA, so I'm trying to restrict my search to remote jobs. That rules out most of finance, and many Alphabet-related jobs. I really, really hope I don't need to move my family to find decent work.
Is this not still the case? Investment banks and hedge funds were full of EE majors back when I was there, and most banks have significant software operations.