Bad news for coders: The US is past peak software developer
Bad news for coders: The US is past peak software developer
The strong demand for software developers has softened, so it could take more time to land this type of work.
A new ADP Research Institute report shows employment for software developers has declined from January 2018. Data elsewhere show fewer opportunities for people to fill software development and tech roles after the US labor market is no longer as hot as it was a few years ago.
"The tech job market has undeniably slowed since the end of 2022, cooling after a few years of rapid hiring during the pandemic recovery," Daniel Zhao, Glassdoor's lead economist, said in a written statement. "Rising interest rates, the end of pandemic-era trends and a slowing economy overall has crimped demand for tech workers."
We're in a "fuck around" cycle where they pretend that the problem was we didn't have "copilot", and not that all of our development managers are wildly unqualified.
The "find out" part comes next.
Which is fucking impossible to fathom, because my fucking grocery store's app can't even implement search reliably, today.
I'm not sure how they're going to manage to make things worse.
Actually, I'll make a guess. My guess is we will go under the critical skill level needed for building safe hospital equipment, and we will get a rash of that stuff killing people due to lack of programmer skills.
I hope the asshole CEOs are the ones that die, but there's not enough karma in the world for that.
Business Insider? Really?
What's wrong with Business Insider? Genuine question
Above and beyond what the other poster said, they're a propaganda outlet for the management class... they love to (for example) boost studies that say Work From Home is bad and inefficient and "debunk" studies that say it's more efficient or has other benefits (with headlines like "The data is in folks, it's time to go back to the office!").
And if you need more evidence of who they really are, they're owned by Axel Springer.
It's very mass market, not particularly well informed general news source and this is a specialist community where this is relevant to its specialist field
Apparently it's hard to get hired in software. Meanwhile, some of the worst software ever made is being written today. Have you tried using literally any software recently? We're in this "barely good enough to function while being heavily supplemented by tech support" phase. I guess capitalism breeds incompetence as long as it's still profitable?
A lot of senior people have fucked off from corporate life to consult and do their own thing and companies have laid off more expensive senior developers with decades of experience in favor of the young and talented and of cheap H1Bs. This is the result.
I remember applying for an internship at a company which app had like 1-2 stars on App Store and was nearly unusable. There were like 100 people applying there. And it wasn't some cool startup or whatever, just a regular bank.
If you hear about a job being in demand, then it's too late to get into it, those news will always only be good for those who are already in the field, by the time you make it through 5 years of uni, you will be competing against hordes of people who did the same in a demand bubble that's bursting or deflating.
Right now cybersecurity seems to be having a soft boom, if you're in it you're good, take it easy and maybe do a cert and diversify skillset, if you're not, don't bother.
Same with data science/ML which I would assume is going to have a large boom soon (or already had? Last I remember anyone talking about it was Cloud™️ Big Data™️ days, far pre-LLM/GenAI craze ATM.)
I feel like a lot of the issue is that software engineers used to be subsidized by both investors propping up unsustainable business models and extremely invasive targeted advertising, and both of those things are either phasing out or being legislated away. A lot of the tracking and advertising practices that kept services like Facebook and Gmail free are illegal now (rightfully so), and investors are starting to realize that not everything is going to become profitable just by having an app.
I think the solution is probably two fold. First, I think the government should invest more into open source software. A lot of the work that keeps the internet running is done by unpaid volunteers. And second, I think we need to go back to paying for services. Giving away services for free because you use them to spy on your users is just an unethical business model. It’s profitable, but so is child labor.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Data elsewhere show fewer opportunities for people to fill software development and tech roles after the US labor market is no longer as hot as it was a few years ago.
"The tech job market has undeniably slowed since the end of 2022, cooling after a few years of rapid hiring during the pandemic recovery," Daniel Zhao, Glassdoor's lead economist, said in a written statement.
"Rising interest rates, the end of pandemic-era trends and a slowing economy overall has crimped demand for tech workers."
"There was a slowdown in software developer hires in 2020, and then we had a couple bounce backs, and I think that's reflective of how the pandemic really spurred this increase into digital service offerings," Richardson said.
Nick Bunker, economic research director for North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab, told BI, "it's unlikely we'll see levels of demand like we saw in '21, in '22 for software development anytime soon."
Data from Handshake, a platform where students can look for work, suggests a cooler demand for software developers or engineers.
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