It’s a dark time to be a tech worker right now::Nearly 300,000 tech employees have been laid off since last year, data shows.
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“It’s a good time to unionize tech workers right now…”
Best time to form a union was yesterday. Next best is today.
I remember seeing articles on habr about unionization and that it is better done now when it is eazy.
Is it easy? Tech salaries have crazy potential, I’m not sure I’d be willing to trade job security for the limitations on that potential that a collective agreement might impose. It’d still be a tough sell.
Is it easy?
Relative to possible future? Sure.
the limitations on that potential that a collective agreement might impose.
I’m trying to imagine it… Trying to imagine “and salary shall not be more than xxx$/hr” in collective agreement. Sorry, I can’t.
Salaries != Wages. Found the dev who needs a union lol
It’s a dark time too be right now.
I work at a large tech company, and the feeling here is unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. There are a few camps:
- Workers on visas that are utterly petrified of losing their jobs, and are struggling to plan for anything long-term, since companies that lay people off can’t file green cards for employees.
- Workers that are just numb to everything. They don’t give a fuck, they are jaded with the bullshit their employer pulls, and work is just work.
- People that would happily take a voluntary layoff to GTFO, spend some time with family, and potentially move to something better.
What seems to be the dominating feeling that everyone has, is that they no longer support their leaders. They feel there are too many middle-managers, they realise that their C-Suite staff are fucking useless, and the CEO’s are almost universally awful as leaders. Sundar has caused Google to nose-dive in popularity, Jassy is so ineffective that no one even knows he is CEO, Musk is a known sociopath going through a mental breakdown, Zuck bet everything on VR to mask huge privacy/product failings, and alongside all of this are dozens of CEO’s that forced employees back to the office or laid people off for bullshit reasons.
My hope from this dark time is that companies arise that focus on the employee first, learn from the mistakes made by big tech, and purposefully manoeuvre around FAANG until they are relegated to boomer tech. Until then, like most SWE’s, I’m just hoping things get better soon…
Are you referring specifically to the big, popular tech companies everyone knows about or to the whole industry? Because there are a lot of smaller companies who aren’t yet run by psychopaths, at least not any more than usual.
I trust my boss but his boss is the CEO and I think the CEO is a piece of garbage.
an overpaid piece of garbage
Given that no one noticed he went on vacation for three weeks I agree.
To be honest that sounds like a CEO that trusts the workers, if he’s letting you guys do the f you want. Unless i misunderstood and somehow he still manages to f stuff up for you.
Maybe I just don’t really like being told what to do so I am being unfair to the guy. You do have a point.
But i agree that it’s basically a useless role anyway, and it’s paid 10-50x the average salary
Keep in mind the core value of most of these companies is “we have a web page”. If only all these unhappy developers could somehow create their own webpage and we could all switch to using the web page of a better company…
(Preaching to the choir here, since we’re on Lemmy. I guess nobody is making money or employing people because of Lemmy though.)
Executives: We’re doing more with less!
grinding, screeching noises coming from the engine room
Executives: Better profits! Lower costs!
grinding, screeching noises coming from the engine room
To be fair, those are the normal TARDIS sounds.
On the other hand, Dr Who doesn’t have an engineering or SRE staff.
Sorry everyone, I made the mistake of trying to better myself and get out of this blue collar hell hole existence I live in and started learning web development last year. Naturally this has to happen then lol
:P
Bouncing between high paid tech work and driving forklifts and lifting boxes every few years is not fun. Wish this industry was more stable
This hasn’t been my (anecdotal) experience, or that of anyone in my network.
The industry is unstable no doubt about that, but we’ve never had trouble finding better places to land.
IMO if you’ve been in tech building your skills for a few years, you really shouldn’t have trouble finding work. '01 was weird but there was still plenty of work, especially in defense. '08 was scary but turned out to be a great time to join a startup. Sometimes it’s a lateral move instead of up, sometimes it requires relocating , but if you’ve been doing good work and building your professional network you should never have to go back to driving forklifts (unless you choose to).
Are you actually in the market right now or just making stuff up? You use a lot of qualifying language in this post that makes it sound like you’re just reassuring yourself. It comes off as condescension.
There are hundreds of thousands of unemployed devs right now, plus all the scrub gold chasers trying to break into the industry. And not everyone has connections that can get them a job. Networking is still a numbers game, it isn’t magic.
I’m not sure what qualifying language you took offense at, and I wasn’t intending to be condescending.
I admitted that my experience was indeed anecdotal, but I stand by my statements. If you’re good at what you do in tech, you have a few years of experience, and you’re willing to take take positions that differ from your comfort zone you should never be without well paying work.
I’m always in the market as you put it, even though I’m not looking to leave my current position any time soon. I did 2 interviews in the last 7 days, and I turn down offers probably once a month.
I know this isn’t how it works for everyone in tech, but once you get your career grooved it isn’t unrealistic.
I’m always willing to take positions different from my comfort zone but it feels like no one wants to hire me unless I have experience with all their tech stack and languages or am willing to take a pay cut. But I can’t in this environment, I have loans and a family and expensive rent and groceries to pay for. It’s kind of annoying because I actually would like to change it up lol.
I hear you, it’s always tough out there, keep at it you got this.
The reason I take multiple interviews a week even when I’m not looking change positions is because it takes that level of legwork to maintain my career.
I don’t want to sound like I’m down playing how difficult it is to succeed in our industry. It takes a bunch of work, and networking, but getting ahead if you have talent is 100% doable.
Thatd a good idea. I really need to do the same thing: apply and take interviews all the time even when I’m not looking to change. At the very least, it’ll help me know what to frameworks and platforms to study for instead of studying broad tech interview concepts.
Explain me like I’m five - why?
Because the big tech companies are laying off, all the tech companies have decided they too need to layoff people to lower costs, improve profits, report better earnings, etc.
Fast forward to next year when they’re up shit creek because their skeleton crews can’t possibly do All The Things. Executives retire, take huge bonuses; repeat.
There’s no evidence that the layoffs at these firms are actually tech workers. Tons of other positions exist at these companies, like managers, sales, marketing, support staff.
My money is on administrative/clerical. This is the easiest to automate.
What on earth do you mean no evidence? I mean just check layoffs.fyi which specifically tracks this.
I’m trying to find where on the site where it tracks the type of employees laid off but it doesn’t seem to track that at all?
For companies/employees that choose to share (eg in hopes of getting recruited to a new job) you can even get individuals information from that site. That includes actual job titles.
These companies tend to be very light on administrative roles anyway. So the ratios make sense even if they just laid off 5% of staff in total.
I’m not seeing that at all. Only total employees laid off and the industry the company is in.
1k job applications since June I’m ready for the inevitable end
Just wanted to drop this update in here for anybody going through this now: I finally got a job offer, but it took over 1700 total applications, and 11 months! I hope you have had some luck in finding something since your original comment!
All the best to you, my dude.
If people randomly drew your name out of a hat, on average you would have to apply to “the average number of applicants for positions you are applying for” number of jobs to get hired. Keep at it, some jobs see thousands of applicants.
700+ applications and multiple recruiting companies later and still only 3 interviews since May. With almost a decade of software development experience. It’s actually a little reassuring that I’m not alone here and it’s not just a problem with me. Best of luck in your search friend!
Ok whew I thought I was just doing something wrong. Glad to hear but also not glad to hear figuring what we’re having to go through
Interesting trend in the comments - technology veterans who went through the dotCom crash have quietly moved to union jobs, and aren’t sweating this iteration.
Worth keeping in mind.
Unions aren’t exactly a saving grace
I would argue they are. My reasoning for this argument would be pointing at the history of the working class.
What is your reasoning for saying they are not?
Low pay for one. They start you low even if you have experience. You lose the ability to negotiate your pay or promotions.
This kind of bullshit generalization leads me to believe this conversation wouldn’t go very far. I’ll stop here. Cheers.
lol. Sounds like a cop out because you have no counter argument. Not a surprise
always been
Is this a joke? Software development regularly comes out on top as one of the best jobs. Good pay, relatively low stress, and good work life balance.
Learn plumbing, poo will always flow.
I wouldn’t be too concerned. 300k is not really that many compared to the size of the industry. And there is a ton of aging software that is falling apart due to a lack of investment. Like the airlines. And all the utilities that keep getting hacked. And hospitals. With governments starting to hold companies responsible for getting hacked, there will be jobs to rebuild hold software a plenty.
Most work environments I’ve been in enable 1 developer to do work that requires 2 developers to maintain.
Yeah, or 3. Lol.
