Ask HN: Where are the software jobs now? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Where are the software jobs now?

6 pointsMadmallard4 comments

As far as I've seen, even with people I know, software jobs are really falling by the wayside. Go on /r/forhire, /r/slavelabour and there are quite literally 10-1 software devs with 5-10 years experience looking for work and even heavily underselling themselves. Yeah many of these are overseas, but still. I've seen in threads here corroborated that there is slim pickings for software engineers.

What technologies and domains are actually looking for help right now?

It seems like everyone is a fullstack developer well-versed in React and cloud technologies so those positions are 100 applications minimum.

I have ~10 years experience, mostly in older technologies but I'm quite skilled at problem solving in general. It seems I have to pivot, and I'm not sure what to pivot to in order to have a good fishing line. Googling this has mixed results, and a lot of those aggregate sites as far as I understand the positions are literally just not being filled. So it ends up not really being an accurate representation of what is actually needed.

Any thoughts on this? Do you think we're entering the AI and foreign cheap labor death spiral of tech jobs and things are just going to get really awful?

There’s no AI or offshoring death spiral. Companies overhired for years when they had access to cheap money (low interest rates). Now we see the correction in the form of layoffs and hiring freezes. Look outside of tech companies and you will see plenty of jobs in other industries. Those companies will prefer business domain experience.

A lot of developers with little experience will now discover that most employers don’t really care about stacks or leetcode, React or Node, Rust or C++. In the world of FAANG and startups imitating the tech giants, maybe, because other developers run the interview process. In the rest of world employers want to hire people who can add business value and solve actual problems.

The most durable and lucrative skills I have all date from decades ago: Unix system admin, C and C++, and relational databases with SQL. If I had to pick one today I would choose SQL. In five years no one will remember React/Redux, but Oracle experts will do fine.

People calling themselves “full stack” when they can’t write an aggregate query in SQL or change permissions on a directory in Linux make me laugh. The software business suffers way too much from fads and fashion to invest your career in one or two things that seem hot right now. Better to master the core technologies and work on foundational knowledge. I got lucky — a mentor told me that early in my career, almost 40 years ago. Still good advice.

Yeah I don’t buy that at all. Learning linux commands and SQL and DB management is significantly easier than fullstack dev.

If you say so. Unix/Linux system administration -- which includes "learning commands" but also a lot more (networing, security, scaling, monitoring, etc.) -- along with relational databases/SQL, sit at the bottom of the "full stack" part as foundational skills. Lots of people who can manage to get Node and React to do something and push a container to Heroku call themselves "full stack web developers." The term "full stack" has lost all meaning, way too many people with weak and questionable skills call themselves "full stack," and the job market punishes accordingly.

Attaching vague or meaningless titles to a CV just pigeonholes the candidate and assumes everyone agrees on what terms like "full stack" refer to. Better to have some actual accomplishments listed, in terms of business value, because "can write 500 lines of React-oriented Javascript in a week" doesn't communicate any business value, and that's very likely why people with CVs that look like that are seeing little interest right now, if HN posts and comments are any guide.

I'll add some more comments even though I expect to get downvoted for pointing out some things that seem obvious to me.

We all have to take control of our careers. Blaming bogeymen like "AI" or "foreign cheap labor" (offshoring), or how recruiters and HR people don't understand tech, or how companies don't know how to interview and hire just marks a person as not in charge of their career choices.

People who can learn, participate in a team and organization, and add business value will always have good job prospects. That has little to do with specific tech trends (languages, frameworks) or gamification like leetcode or public side projects. Programmers have over time turned the software industry into a self-referential cult, where the business that pays salaries gets ignored or mocked ("I just want to code, don't make me go to meetings." "I don't want to watch actual users on the site."). Programmers waste enormous resources on new tools, languages, frameworks, fads and fashion, very little of which pays off in terms of adding business value. Even senior-ish developers with 5+ years complain they have no professional contacts when they get laid off, and expect LinkedIn to somehow make up for that because a cool mechanical keyboard or dark mode on a blog took priority back when it mattered.

The low interest rate over-hiring bubble that created a lot of companies with low and negative profits has come to an end, for now. Companies adjusted with layoffs and demands for actual productivity that shows up as profits. This is my third or fourth downturn in tech. I learned after the first one (also an offshoring scare back in the '80s) to focus on fundamental skills, cultivate an actual professional network and friends (not on sites like LinkedIn), and pay as much attention to business domain expertise as to technical skills. More than half of what I have learned in almost 40 years programming has faded into history, obsolete or another blip on the endless parade of fad and fashion the industry pretends represents progress.

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