After I got laid off in late 2023 I had a devil of a time finding work (despite having AI experience) to the point my unemployment ran out -
And I was 20 years as a dev and tech lead and full stack, (never had trouble finding work) including stints as a leading EM and CTO, I’ve been an industry award winning innovation lead,a digital studio director, switching tech stacks and cloud certs all my career..mentoring juniors and doing podcasts and writing white papers etc, but peanuts - nothing
Getting ghosted by 25 year olds in interviews and doing rounds and rounds and leetcode and all that but no success- for example I had a 7 round interview with NBCUniversal in 2023 and then got ghosted (I probably doged a bullet since they had subsequent layoffs)
a 12 month stint with nothing - we lost our savings as my wife got laid off too
Since then I pivoted to AI and Gen AI startups- joining incubators and finally got some work or at least cofounded some AI startups- now money is tight and I dont have health insurance but at least I have a job… it sucks as a over 45 year old as I have so much experience but no one cares.. still dont have much grey hair so I can pass for 40 to get noticed
No one stable is hiring or your resume just goes to a dead letter queue or is lost in ether or lost amid all the ai generated resumes out there - young ML and PHds and people under 40 seem to be getting work in Gen AI but thats about it
networking is the only game left and most good recruiters I know got laid off too
At least I’ve built up production experience in agents and context engineering RL, pytorch, langchain/LangGraph, RAG, KGa, etc python, BAML, LLM and LLMops to add to my years of full stack work
The number of just straight out NO's I've gotten has been surprising and disheartening. I've been a developer for 20 years and genuinely don't think I've gotten an outright "no" before this year. Usually just no response. I've gotten maybe eight or nine actual rejections this year. It's honestly worse, emotionally.
Ideally I want a job outside my wheelhouse to learn and move forward, but it seems like no one these days is interested in any sort of training.
There have been two gigs I was really excited about that seemed more-or-less exactly what I have spent the past decade doing and they've BOTH actually replied that they didn't think my skills were a good fit. I genuinely have zero idea what you're looking for if the literal perfect fit isn't it.
Before COVID I would regularly apply for jobs, almost always get them, and decline largely to keep my interview skills fresh.
This last year of looking has been the total opposite. I've applied for umpteen places, and gotten a little bit of email back and forth, and a single interview (it's in a couple days, wish me luck).
Idk about interviewing, but there are many benefits to opening fake job listing (gathering a database of people, keeping track of people looking for jobs, etc) which is why people do it. Data is valuable.
It is one trick that allows management to lie to everyone, and to implement downsizing. Fact is that A LOT of US businesses became unsustainable due to the tariffs (which Trump totally did for "US first" and not, I repeat NOT to get an extra tax started for him to spend), the retaliatory tariffs, followed by Trump doing the largest mass-firing in US history, presumably because this is listed in introductory economics textbooks in the chapter "what caused the great depression".
So a LOT of businesses are now in the position that they have to raise prices significantly into the worst market in decades. So they'll get significantly less revenue and they'll have to go into overdrive on saving money. That means no hiring, layoffs, price hikes, shrinkflation, ... the whole thing. They have to do a lot less with a lot less.
How does management respond to this? Well, management generally isn't competent. Their only job is to negotiate, and now that will really be put to the test. The smarter ones know that negotiation doesn't even matter under these circumstances (since it's a fixed pie being divided: someone has to lose). So they're maximizing their runway and getting out. And first, of course, they lie. They tell people even inside companies that they're hiring, even to the point of having interviews. They post job postings, because that's part of doing covert layoffs: they replace full time employees by temporary ones, even interns. They wait with price hikes until they're through inventory. They notice they've signed long-term contracts with Walmart that they cannot fulfill. And so on. So they lie to maintain their reputation for after the crisis (so on their next interview they can believably claim "I could have saved the company, but I found a better opportunity ...").
So I bet we'll be seeing a LOT of managers, especially higher up, suddenly decide they need to find a new job, and when it turns out that doesn't work, take a 2-3 year excuse to take a break.
As for replacing these people with AI: they're not spending ... and AI is expensive. Sure there's startups using AI, but larger companies are just firing people and not replacing them. Certainly they don't see the current period as a good time to change ... anything.
Governments should be "countering the crisis" and hire, according to economics textbooks, and increase social spending with the savings from the decade past ... except ... there are no savings from the decade past. So governments are firing, laying off, saving on healthcare, and so on and so forth. The US obviously has everyone's attention but the UK is doing the same (frankly, worse) and so is the EU.
Trump will be the most desperate manager of all, doing anything and everything he can to delay this from happening until the midterm elections in November, like lowering interest rates. But the thing everyone needs to remember about interest rates: they only lower for a good reason. The problem for Trump is ... either he delays this to beyond November or he becomes a "lame-duck" president, unable to do anything.
Two things: (1) Trump doesn't control the prime lending rate (and that's not the interest rate, either); and, (2) he's rapidly headed to lame duck status, already.
Unfortunately "lame duck" status doesn't mean nearly as much under today's radical Republican model of governance.
Namely, where the President does things unconstitutionally and illegally, like creating new taxes on Americans, refusing to execute laws saying money must be spent achieving a goal, ordering the persecution of opponents, etc.
Meanwhile, the new conservative majority of the Supreme Court refuses to act claiming impeachment is literally the only remedy, and a small minority of Republican legislators prevent impeachment from occurring.
Then I'm not posting job openings at all, and I'm working my personal network extra hard to get a pipeline of actual candidates setup.
And it's not just the ATS doing this -- oooodles of goobers who are nowhere near qualified are using AI and slamming the hiring pipelines. I'm already leaning on the personal networks because of that, anyway, but Parent Poster's idea just means I push for that explicitly instead of informally.
See also: layoffs.fyi -- the market is just SATURATED with quality talent
> ... And it's not just the ATS doing this -- oooodles of goobers who are nowhere near qualified are using AI and slamming the hiring pipelines. I'm already leaning on the personal networks because of that, ...
> In the graduate job market, the "goods" are job applications. When employers are flooded with thousands of AI-generated, indistinguishable cover letters, they lose the ability to identify the high-quality candidates who invested time and effort. The signal is drowned out by noise. Just as buyers in Akerlof's market stopped buying used cars, employers are stopping the open hiring process. They retreat to offline networks and nepotism to find people they feel they can trust. The issue is that if everyone sounds perfect on paper, the only signal left is a personal introduction.
That will never happen. We've got employers making employees sign ridiculous Non-compete, non-disclosure, non-disparagement, agreements. Do you really think this will ever happen? We've collectively decided that corporations are people and people have freedom of speech. We've spent years doing the H1B dance. (I'm not anti-immigration. I'd love to simply give them citizenship. I've met some amazing people on H1Bs. The system is exploitive to US workers AND the H1B recipients). Face it, as someone who is actually doing the work of IT, you lost a long time ago.
Amazon had a whole paper about how bringing migrants and diversity makes unionization less likely and successful.
It's part of the point.
Also it's not just the US. Here in Europe it's the same.
Hell the government spent it's money trough the employers org training Moroccans to become programmers to then bring em in.
I knew a fair few programmers who believe this is all just for low skill low paying jobs as if paying better wages for those is impossible and as if those deserve to be undercut.
The weird thing is how this kind of plainly rightwing economic rhetoric is often masquerading as left wing.
The only silver lining in this mess is that it does seem like this was finally the push for my industry to start seriously pushing for unions. Of course, corporate won't let it come easy but I only see momentum building now.
> Ideally I want a job outside my wheelhouse to learn and move forward, but it seems like no one these days is interested in any sort of training.
No one has the resources left to pay for it, that's the thing. Clients are cutting budgets because no one is buying their stuff, so everyone is looking for seniors and above only, and replacing juniors/intermediates with AI.
Trickle-down ideology is now beginning to eat itself, the ouroboros is complete - turns out, eventually the entire economy will crash down on itself when people can't afford things. Even Henry Ford already knew this...
... which was needed because no/less profit can and does send the stonk price tanking. That's also a "there are no resources left to do the right thing" - the stonk market dynamics are a part of what is eating our economies alive.
How do you reckon? My understanding is that they're valid perm positions that legally must be offered to US citizens before they can be filled by anyone else.
it's really, really easy to say that applicants don't meet the requirements, since hiring is sooo subjective. "none of the applicants had 8 years and 2 months experience in this company working on this team, so they won't be able to perform the duties".
or, if they do have a flood of qualified applicants (the point of the website), they can simply not go forward with PERM at this time for their selected candidate. PERM roles aren't new jobs in the sense that the employer is "down" one employee if they don't fill it. PERM roles are simply a status change for an existing employee.
Nominally - although perhaps more often barking and not serious - is if you're a super duper qualified US citizen, you either can find a job there, or, you sue the company for discrimination, either way you get paid. The latter being the part that's highly hypothetical and potentially not realistic.
No, because software engineering interviews are a specific skill and you need to be on top of it - eg leetcode, sys design and soft skills and hiring managers are making everything harder
Ie its a race to the bottom - there is no gold standard for a productive software engineer who is transferable to another company that really people trust
I work in a FAANG as a SWE. I'm not the on selecting candidates, but I do interview a lot of them. I'm pretty sure I've never seen a 50+ year old candidate. 99% of the candidates have less than 10 year experience, and are in their 20s or 30s.
So yes, ageism is real. I suppose the company gets away with it by saying they look for candidates with 3-10 years of experience?
At that stage, I think I would pass Leetcode with 2-3 months of practice, and I don't mind putting the work if this is what it takes. I'm just not sure I'd be given the chance.
I was a laid off in the beginning of the year from my remote job, landed several interviews, and I found a new job in <2 months. My resume is less impressive than yours, ~10 years of experience.
I was able to land interviews with some remote companies. I used to work at Shopify, a got some interviews at Ruby shops from that.
Some possibilities:
1. Ageism, this is a distinct possibility.
2. You held very senior positions. I think a lot of people don't like hiring people that were more senior than them. So that CTO is being held as a negative. They are not saying "Hey I get the experience of an EM and a CTO in a Senior Engineer for a bargain salary", they are worried you will overshadow them. This is sub optimal behavior for companies.
3. Talking to people I think non-tech markets look like they are doing fine. People I know in Rochester, Syracuse, and Cleveland aren't having issues getting jobs. I think the huge layoffs in big tech have left a big supply in tech cities to less demand.
> 2. You held very senior positions. I think a lot of people don't like hiring people that were more senior than them. So that CTO is being held as a negative. They are not saying "Hey I get the experience of an EM and a CTO in a Senior Engineer for a bargain salary", they are worried you will overshadow them. This is sub optimal behavior for companies.
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Not only is there the overshadow worry, but there's the overqualified for the position.
You were CTO once, and now you're a IC again... are you looking for a CTO position still?
I had an experience (post dot com crash) where the team hired a senior engineer... who left the team within a year to be an engineering manager somewhere else in the company and our team was back to interviewing for the position again.
From our team's perspective we wasted the time interviewing and onboarding a person when they job-hopped (even within the company) in under a year. Despite being qualified as a senior engineer it wasn't what they wanted to do.
To that end, overly qualified candidates are similarly risky to hire as under qualified ones.
I've also been in situations where someone in a senior or management position is hired with previous Big Tech or startup experience and tries to make the regional retail company's internals into a Big Tech engineering department which ended poorly for everyone involved.
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To your third point, the desire to stay on the coasts and around Big Tech companies is also a thing. Being willing to move to and within the midwestern states (some companies have return to office... others don't want to create a tax nexus in another state - if you don't hire anyone in California or Colorado you don't have to follow those laws... so hire everyone in one state and only deal with one state's payroll tax and insurance options).
> I had an experience (post dot com crash) where the team hired a senior engineer... who left the team within a year to be an engineering manager somewhere else in the company and our team was back to interviewing for the position again.
Same reason I struggled to get a job at McD's or Home Depot years ago when laid off. They knew I'd be gone ASAP and that I probably wouldn't eat shit the way the local rube demographic would. These are crappy service jobs but they still want you to stick it out for at least 6-12 months.
My career started in the south and then we moved to Seattle - it feels like everyone is laid off in Seattle - I could probably find something in the south again
can't comment on west coast but from perspective in NYC, i think the market for SWEs willing to work in office here is very good. might be different since there's lots of different industries hiring for SWE roles in addition to typical tech "startups" here.
i've noticed that folks who want to work remote having a tougher time if they're looking for tech jobs. makes sense if you look for jobs at a local non-tech company, you might have better luck.
generally seems like remote jobs have the most competition so if you can find jobs localized to your market, you will have more luck there.
4. Overqualified can also be seen as you are seeking this job purely temporarily. While continuing to seek better. You may be gone within weeks. A more alert project might seek to use your experience at low cost for that little while. But a harried manager already had a problem and might see it as now having two problems.
Being overqualified is indeed a real phenomenom. Employers can think your too expensive, or that your desperatem and that you might not stick around long. All valid concerns.
I don't mean this as a judgement; I am genuinely curious: with a career like that, how are you out of money after twelve months? Do you have unusual expenses? I am 31, currently making $180k (the most I've ever made) as a bog standard 'senior SWE', and I have nearly a million dollars. I am not frugal, I don't think; I just bought a $900 pair of sunglasses last week, and that wasn't a huge outlier expense. I have at least twenty years of savings right now. What is eating up your (and any onlookers', if you care to comment) budget?
It's also possible that OP means short term savings kept for circumstances like these, and long term investments bear more cost (e.g. keeping money in a money market fund vs in stocks has different tax implications when you take the money out).
Or good investment planning. I only recently built up savings after spending my entire career maxing out 401ks. If I was laid off, I'd only have like 6 months or so of savings before I run out despite having a coastFIRE/leanFIRE NW.
Yes, there are hardship withdraws from 401ks, but the older you get, the more retirement account means retirement account. Meaning, it becomes more clear that the money in that account needs to be left alone until things get dire. You're not going to be more employable in 20 years.
A 401k and an IRA together constitute only $31,500 this year, and less in each previous year, before taxes. That shouldn't be the main factor. FWIW I was including those accounts in my 'savings' number.
Getting replaced by H1Bs after a year and then being out of work for six months (because ageism), four times in a row--that'll do it! Especially now since H1Bs replacing you makes you look like a job-hopper so your job search becomes more impossible every time.
If botox is required to secure an engineering job when you have a long proven track record of solving hard technical problems successfully- the company is a fraud and the jobs are fake.
“Companies” don’t hire people, a few human individuals acting autonomously, with their own beliefs and biases, are ultimately responsible for bringing someone new onboard.
Once you hit 40s just get the botox anyway. Looks better. Only lasts 3 months or so. Good for a few rounds of interviews.
The way hiring works is a reflection of company culture. If they can’t execute a hiring process that hires the most skilled and competent instead of the youngest and best looking, guess what kind of coworkers you will have to deal with?
Anyways, I am in my 40s- I am an amateur strength athlete and eat healthy and already look almost inappropriately healthy and youthful for a sedentary job- enough so that I feel sometimes I’m not taken as seriously because I don’t look like a stereotypical elder nerd.
An ageist company culture does not mean the company is a fraud though or that the jobs are fake. It’s all very real, you are just rejected, that’s what makes it so frustrating, you could be living the good life if only those people weren’t so ageist. Now imagine being a POC and your whole life is like that, just racism everywhere keeping you out.
In both cases- ageism and racism, the employer culture is hiring less qualified workers based on criteria other than skill and competence. That necessarily means they have a lower caliber of expertise on average, as they are artificially decreasing the pool size of potential candidates. Moreover, if they have a discriminatory hiring practice in the first place, it is very unlikely that they are really selecting for competence even within the preferred demographic. For an extreme example, look at the current US administration, hiring only people with "Mar-a-lago face" combined with them needing to have a particular ideology and extreme lack of ethics, necessarily makes virtually all of the hires incompetent. They aren't, presumably specifically seeking incompetent hires, it's just the only people left given the fact that they select for things other than competence first.
I hire software engineers, and given all of the discrimination in the field, my willingness to hire women, minorities, and older people gives me a substantial advantage over those I am competing against that have discriminatory hiring practices. Although I'm not selecting for discriminated against groups, in practice I hire almost exclusively from them, because there are a surplus of extremely qualified people in those demographics that are getting rejected from everywhere else. I'm sure there are a ton of competent young white men in software engineering, but they're never among my top applicants, presumably because they've already been hired elsewhere.
This widespread discrimination pre-loads the applicant pool, such that the effect is enormous: you are getting substantially inferior employees if you have discriminatory hiring practices, because so many others do to, so your "preferred demographic" is already depleted of competent applicants.
Possibly besides the point but I wouldn't consider botox "taking care of yourself", taking care of yourself is staying in shape, eating healthy, and maybe dressing well and practicing good hygiene.
Can we just pause and consider what happened to this industry where this is the advice.
This is the natural consequence of marketing and fundraising completely destroying engineering. It's not about real things anymore. It's about image. It's an industry of carnival barkers turning everything it touches to shit.
The industry had turned to shit long ago when we deviated from the path of the UNIX philosophy and fell into cargo cult frontend programming. We had the most powerful UI in the world, the command line, and we gave it up for pretty pixels and shiny buttons. We have lost what it truly meant to be an engineer, now just look at the kinds of people entering the industry today: No passion for the science, just chasing cash and quick thrills. And you wonder why our interview process has gotten so shallow?
"Now it's different". Is it really? One aspect of these stories is that we all do age and we do climb into higher positions. So we run into "too old" and "too qualified" and "will leave asap for something better". And the reason is not that the economy or job market are different. The reason is that we are older. Nothing wrong with both happening at the same time but this "I never ran into this problem before" does have a common difference which is "I was never that old before".
I use "old" for shock value here while being totally in the camp that companies would do well to find ways to use older, more experienced talent at a lower cost than "normal". (Even after I have run into "older" as inflexible and a pain to work with.)
But there is also another problem in many of these reports: Older and still applying by sending resumes in response for job postings! If you are older you should have a network you can use. If they find nothing for you - or don't care to talk to you, then THAT is the better signal. And still not necessarily a signal about the job market.
Not sure what you are on about - I have a giant network in linkedin and it did help me find a job eventually…
You only cultivate a regional network if you live in the same spot for years - i moved from the south to Seattle - Im not moving back to the South- so my network is mostly useless
I have for example a network with OpenAI, Google and Anthropic - all it got me was getting to the team match stage with Google followed by denial after almost 6 months in the interview process
As for OpenAI and Anthropic you need to have success in the AI startup world+network+ be young (old is only allowed id you have massive career success eg VP at Google or Amazon)
Do you have a thesis for why that might be happening? Ageism? Overqualification? The next generation of hiring managers not knowing what to do with you? Past experience being deemed irrelevant to modern SWE problems? Is it all just a bad market? Your profile strikes me as the last one that would struggle with landing a gig.
Yeah, this ageism factor mixed with how unstable in general my industry is had me adjusting my long term plan to focus on being able to survive off my own products. I'm still far off from that point but it's probably best to plan my mid-late career before industry locks me out...
Doesn't help that I've tried to specialize for quite a while but simply can't stay around long enough without layoffs happening. Hard to be a domain expert when companies let you go ever 3 years. T shaped generalist it is, then.
What’s admirable is that you’ve actually applied to jobs below your pay grade. Most people won’t because doing that grind in your 40s is actually hard especially if you have kids.
My brother who is nearly 50 and has worked in tech since the dot com boom, got laid off in January and couldn't find a job until last week. This job, too, was just a contractual position at his old Fortune 50 firm.
He has an engineering degree from one of the top 5 engineering colleges in India, a Master's from one of the top 5 engineering schools in the US. He built some of the systems that form the foundation of the entire call center industry.
And now he pivoted to GenAI and has dozens of very impressive public projects including some heavily starred open source repos
The dead comment replying to this said "Start your own company," which I hear a lot. The problem is, the #1 thing YC looks for in a founder is they're wealthy enough to absorb risk. You don't take on massive risk from a position of financial insecurity.
Are you ready for great age of suffering? Because there will be no saving, no UBI, no plan B. This is it. This is the end of careers and beginning of centuries of misery. AI will replace everyone except around 3%. If you aren't one of those 3%, start accepting the reality of infinite pain.
I think there's something quite interesting (well to me anyway) where if you go by the internet, there is this bloodbath (slight exaggeration perhaps but feels like that) in jobs out in the US, UK, Aus and major European countries (the volume of anecdotes & complaints would suggest a significant downturn in employment) but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along. Not great guns but still ok. The interesting thing is how much is internet chatter a leading signal for this thing now than in previous cycles?
Outside of the unique circumstances of covid, we've never had, to my knowledge, a notable downturn when social media, and all the chatter it generates, has been so prominent or mass engaged. How much of it is just internet noise vs canary in the coal mine stuff. Who knows? But curious to find out in coming months/year
Reality is not particularly rosy for new graduates AFAIK. If I lose my job, I wouldn't be super surprised that I might never get a similar job for the rest of my life -- it is not that I do not have the skills, but 1) the amount of time for a laid off SDE to get a new job could reach to years, not months, so I need to do something else to earn $$$, and 2) why are companies going to hire me, who have gap years and are older, but not some fresh graduates who can work 80 hours per week and only demand half of the salary?
And yes I believe this time it's going to be different. I believe that if the economy dumps again, we are really going to see more hot wars. It is different from 2001, and different from 2008. We have kicked the can for almost 20 years and I kudos the policy makers who managed to achieve this.
I have heard that story every few years for the last 30. I know when it is your personal situation things are hard, but your story is nothing new and people recover. Some get back into whatever their degree was, others start a new career and never do. this will happen again.
> So you read nothing about how graduates during 2008 pretty much had forever stunted careers?
Myself included. Graduated in '08, had to work various minimum wage jobs in retail for several years because no one was hiring. I'm just now at a point in my career, nearing 40, where I should have been at 28.
Degree doesn't matter much when your only work experience is 5 years of working at Starbucks, and you barely have personal projects because you're too busy working 2 jobs to just to survive.
Those of us who suffered through that time period barely recovered, and many didn't recover at all. It shaped an entire generation.
It’s because the site is chalk full of millennials who jumped on the “I was an office assistant making $40k and I did a bootcamp and now make 200k” at the right place at just the right time.
They’re convinced they’ll time the next grift right. Who knows
I think it is wiped from memories because it very specifically affected one or two years of college graduates (that had the experience the parent comment mentioned). Not an entire generation. The data shows millennials as a whole are better off than boomers were at their age.
> The data shows millennials as a whole are better off than boomers were at their age.
Perhaps true if you go east far enough, seems objectively wrong for the majority of the west though. Honest question, if you think this and it isn't just rage bait.. what data supports it? Scott Galloway disagrees and offers hard data, and goes as far as calling it intergenerational theft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJ4hkpQW8E
> Perhaps true if you go east far enough, seems objectively wrong for the majority of the west though.
Much of the (American) millennials generation believes a story that they’re worse off. I feel it is a convenient story for people to tell themselves and blame someone else for their perceived losses. But I pulled up several articles supporting my claim with a quick search, even though the opposite narrative is more widespread.
Example article about how inflation adjusted net worth is higher for millennials than it was for boomers at the same age:
Galloway isn’t necessarily wrong in the individual data points he raises. But if you look at the sum of all of the factors - higher rents, more student debt, etc but also the positive things - the net worth in the end is higher for millennials. And remember this is inflation adjusted already.
Why does home ownership on its own matter? Net worth is inclusive of housing and assets and debt. And net worth is a direct measure of the wealth that is being built.
Because homes are pretty much the only asset a millenial would have at that time that would have grown over time. a 08-9 graducate wouldn't really have much money to spar for stocks unless they made really lucky bets or happened to mine a fewbitcoin they forgot about.
401k and IRAs is where millennials should have their stocks and those have done very well over the years. There is little point in stocks elsewhere (unless you are very rich) since stocks are for long term investments and those two cover the retirement needs of nearly everyone (except the very rich), and there are few other savings needs people might have that stocks qualify for.
Remember you won't live forever (at least not to current medical knowledge, you can bet otherwise if you want), and you can't take it with you (according to most religions). Thus once you have retirement covered and emergency savings you should be spending everything you earn. You should have enough money left at the end of the month to afford the things you buy at the end of the month, but there is no point in any more, enjoy life with what you earn. (donating to charity counts as enjoying life!)
Joe is on the hook for his mortgage and so his monthly cashflow must be higher to afford to live. However his net worth is larger and so he is richer.
This is why middle class people often feel poor than those who are poor: they make more money and have more in total, but they also have large bills and if something happens those bills will catch up with them fast.
Net worth isn't equity - mortgage + 401k. Net worth is assets - liabilities. Equity is not an asset; the house is. So is the 401k. The mortgage is a liability. So Joe's net worth is 100k (IRA) + 300k (value of house) - 200k (mortgage) = 200k positive net worth.
(Another way of thinking about equity, specifically, is it is the real estate contribution to net worth, because it is what is left when you subtract the real estate liability (mortgage) from the real estate asset (value of house). That's why you shouldn't subtract the mortgage from the equity: equity is what's left after you've already subtracted the mortgage.)
(Edit: Adjusted sign in first equation to subtract mortgage. It's probably more technically accurate to keep it as addition and consider the mortgage to be a negative value, but I believe it's more straightforward and intuitive for most people as it is now represented.)
As a thought experiment would you not feel (much) poorer if houses suddenly cost >$5 million tomorrow and you didn't own one yet? Even if everything else cost the same? Even if everything else cost the same and your net worth went up $100k?
However, there are certainly a lot of conflicting studies and data out there. And to be honest, it doesnt feel true given how much young people complain on the internet. Its hard to see which asserion is correct. It isnt necessarily correct just because one study says its so.
That's the average. Please compare the median wealth (especially seeing the absurd paper wealth of crypto bro and stock influencers who are almost exclusively millennials).
[Edit] also inflation is calculated based on average consumption. So you will notice that toys, clothing and electronic devices (TVs, cooking robots), all cheaper and cheaper (due to enshitiffication and quality decrease) count more for inflation than education, cars, housing and probably a lot of other stuff a 25-35 yo care more about.
I feel like your edited-in point is glossed over FAR too often. We talk about inflation like it’s some objective measure when it’s arbitrary as f@$k and mostly only reflects what the current arbiters of inflation want it to reflect.
A great recent example was the Australian decision to add capital gains on a primary residence as a profit (ie. negative expense) when calculating inflation. All of a sudden inflation was very reasonable despite the fact that established homeowners and their families were choosing between groceries and mortgage payments… but in terms of their net worth, YAY! They’re getting ahead!
A lot of the data used to claim millenials are doing better off is based on nonsense like "millenials have larger TVs on average" or "millenials all have smart phones yet boomers didn't have mobile phones", or equating 1 person making 3 times the median wage and 2 people making nothing as just as good as 3 different people making median wage.
Class of 2008 here. A couple years ago a 26 year old colleague whined he made only $130,000 a year. At his age I made $17 an hour photographing tennis rackets. My sympathies were limited…
sorry your math seems strange. You graduated from college in ‘08 - 17 years ago. You’re nearing 40. So let’s say you graduated at 23 … you’ve only had a college level job for five years?
The economy has been moving upward since 2013 - 12 years ago. What were you doing from 2013 to 2020?
I ask because I also graduated around ‘08. I’ve been a software developer since 2016. I’m currently a senior dev with almost a decade of experience.
There were really crappy years to start with, but I feel I’ve made up for it substantially.
My own parents graduated in the late 70s during a terrible economic recession.
It seems weathering economic recessions have been a tradition for several generations.
I still remember articles almost identical to the ones I see now; “this generation is screwed and there is no possible salvation.”
I know some rednecks from Appalachia who did learn to code. He retired from IBM a few years ago (that is IBM was a different company when he worked there than it is now) to a nice retirement in his little mountain shack.
Though I wouldn't tell the rest what they should do. The guy I know had to live in MN for decades (where I met him) away from the rest of his friends and family - that is itself a large cost in lifestyle that I question if money makes up for.
>> Across a generation’s life course, early-life advantages are magnified through disparate occupational and social trajectories that lead to wide late-life disparities in financial and health resources, in a process first termed by Crystal and Shea as one of “cumulative advantage and disadvantage” (CAD; Crystal, 1982, 1986, 2020; Crystal et al., 1992, 2017; Crystal & Shea, 1990b; Dannefer, 1987, 1988). Dannefer (1987) described the trend of increasing inequality over the life course as the “Matthew effect,” applying a biblical dictum first used by Merton (1968), stating that “to he who has much, more is given, and to he who has little, even that is taken.” This ongoing process has also been described as an “obdurate tendency” for increasing inequality over the life course (Dannefer, 2020).
I was going to say this. Money comes, money goes, that’s life. Ideally you’re smart enough to save and invest to weather these storms but for those (like myself) that are still working hard post 40, we know it’s all part of the game.
I tell the younger generation the same thing. Save, invest, max 401k, before you go off and party. Your older self will thank you.
You telling someone with 50k in debt, turning in 1000's or job apps struggling to find a job they studied 4+ years for and not being able to even pay rent to "just save"... is exactly how we got into this situation to begin with.
I'm literally one of these people. My only work experience is a GSoC internship in 2021. I have yet to get hired and I've been looking for 4 years, graduated in 2022 right before ChatGPT came out. I've had no choice but to become a generalist as a consequence, and over the last year or two my interviews have dropped to zero and absolutely none of the advice I've gotten from anybody has helped. Just my personal experience.
Yeah, I'm really sorry this happened. I'm managing a bit better since I graduated in 2017, but I still pretty much had my senior trajectory yoinked from under me. The market is completely different now than back when I graduated.
I don't really have any advice for the present. We're in a storm, so do what you need to weather it. If there's any downtime you do have, use it to prepare for when (if?) the market bounces back:
1. Network. Nothing serious but just get to know people in your area. Keep in contact and they might one day have an in for some work.
2. work on personal projects. They aren't being looked at now, but it'll help you stand out when the market corrects itself.
3. consider some adjacent skillsets. At some point, if this last longer than any of us expect, it may be best to vouch for yourself. learning some graphic design can help you sell your own apps or make websites for others. Learning some art can help you sell games. embrace the generalization and be able to take small products from start to finih by youself. If you don't want to get completely out, you may want to start shaping your career around being your own boss instead of relying on others to employ you.
4. take care of your physical health. I don't know your body, and you may already be doing this. But it's always important to remind people (especially in a field like tech) that sometimes a breath of fresh air and 10 minutes of walking can make all the difference. Don't let yourself get cooped up.
Thank you for this. Networking is tricky (at least in person networking) because I live in an area that pretty much has no tech hub at all. I call it the state nobody talks about because the only time I've ever heard it mentioned is in elections lol. But I've certainly tried to network and will continue to do so.
I can't do graphic design or UI design more generally but I absolutely love to develop software and work with tech. But I am trying to diversify because I don't know what else to do. As a result my resume puts me as a generalist which doesn't exactly help my chances... But eh. I am definitely trying to work with what I have, it's frustrating and really demotivating though.
Probably not helpful, but as a high school dropout and self-taught developer in the industry since 2012. It seems like new grads are being stuck in a similar situation to what the self taughts had to go through to break into a job. Companies care about your work-related experience and dgaf about your college experience. The advice I have is build and contract. Focus on projects and results. If worse comes to worse just set up an LLC and say you've been employed as a developer there for the last 3+ years.
I would echo this as well. When I started, I was still in high school (mid 90s) and the only thing they cared about was “make it work”.
Post college, it was about “what have you done?” vs “where did you go?” and so I demonstrated several projects I had done for the passion. A game engine. A graphics website community. Some novel networking libraries. A MUD. Finally, a database. By the time they got to the mud and database they were ringing me non-stop.
All of these projects done over a weekend or two while working other jobs to afford rent. Call centers are a personal level of hell.
That list should surely had to prepend "pay off debt, live within your means"
Listening to Dave Ramsey on YT gets me amazed on how some people can be so irresponsible and accumulate debt on credit cards and cars they can't afford.
> turning in 1000's of job apps struggling to find a job
This is the entire problem. It's called job hunting, not job fishing. I.e. you should be seeking out specific exact positions that you know are worthwhile and tailoring yourself for them, not casting a net and hoping.
There is value in both. Sometimes fishing will find a great job at a place you have never heard of. Often hunters come home at the end of the day having got nothing.
Hunting is still your better bet overall. figure out who has a need and position yourself to fill it. This also takes a lot more time to pull off than just sending 1000 resumes, and there is no guarantee. there is generally a mix of course, you start by casting a net to see what is there, and then when there is a potential bite you start tailoring your resume to that potential. Not all leads will result in something. Who you know is always important.
I'm gonna have to hold your hand when I tell you this: when you tell the younger generation to "save" or "invest" they are going to walk away from that conversation knowing they were just speaking with one of the most mind-numbingly naive Olds they're going to encounter in probably the next several months.
Please, if you ever want any respect from anyone younger than you ever again in your entire life, do not say those words again.
I appreciate the point you're trying to make, and I agree taking responsibility for one's own life circumstances is the only way to improve them, but surely you understand that 'save and invest' is wholly unsuitable advice for someone with no disposable income or no income at all.
You have two options. Continue to point fingers and complain and be broke, or start putting $100/mo in VOO and save what little money you have for your future?
I know it sucks. I know income inequality is huge. I know the only way out of this is to put in sweat equity. I know the only way to put food on the table is to have a second job at a gas station. I’ve been there. However, as much as you DON’T want to hear it - the only way out of your mess is by you working your way out of your mess.
As I said, I agree with taking personal responsibility - I'm not sure why you're still trying to fight me on that.
> You have two options. Continue to point fingers and complain and be broke, or start putting $100/mo in VOO and save what little money you have for your future?
The imaginary person you're trying to give this advice to graduated from university eighteen months ago and has been living in their parents' house ever since, applying for jobs non-stop. Their income is $0 per month. They are entirely unable to apply your advice; applying your advice is something they aspire to.
If my child was living with me for 18 months post graduation, they would have any job that pays > $0. I don't care if it's McDonalds, but they would be working.
$100/month in VOO isn’t going to do anything (except help people like me who already own a lot).
> the only way out of your mess is by you working your way out of your mess.
Third option is revolution. Could be violent, could be passive like not starting families, complaining on the internet, scrolling tiktok as long as the benefits and body allow, and suicide if necessary.
It is possible for too much of the benefits of working having too high of a likelihood of being captured by rent seekers to not make the work worth it. In old times, the lack of birth control made people have to work more due to needing to support kids, but if I didn’t have kids, I could get by with a much lower standard of living.
Just grow up. Bootstraps! I did it, why can't you?
Well first off, you didn't do it, you got fucked up the ass and asked for more. Your parents and their parents lived in an America where one person could own a home, multiple cars, and care for a large family. They lived in an America where layoffs did not exist, where shareholders were at the bottom of the totem pole, and where companies like GE prided themselves in how much money they gave to their employees.
We now live in an America where GE has been run into the ground, dragged through hell, revived, and then damned again, only for the demon that did it to be praised as a Capitalist God - a template, an alchemist of money, who could seemingly create value out of thin air.
Of course, nobody has stepped back and asked what "value" we're measuring. Not that it matters, because whatever you measure, GE don't got it.
You could have been better off, but you weren't. You're complacent enough, but baby this train goes downtown. There's no reversing course. However hard it was for you, it will only get harder.
Of course, this is big picture stuff. Small picture, can you do things to help your situation? Of course you can. But those things become harder, they become rarer, they become more elusive.
Just get a job and you'll be good! Oh wait no, that doesn't work anymore. Just go to college and you'll be good! No wait, that doesn't work either. Well, just own a home, that's the path to financial freedom! Um, well, actually no not that either. Well just invest in the stock market!
Yes, great idea! I wonder how long that will last! I wouldn't hold your breath.
The only thing they can control is themselves and their habits though.
I’m not avoiding the fact that the economy is fucked. I’m fully aware. It’s up to you how much you’re willing to continue to pay or what you’re willing to sacrifice. It sucks, but the only thing you can control is yourself.
It’s just generic advice that doesn’t even really apply to the fresh grads, their issue is not having any entry point to a career anymore.
I graduated 10 years ago and it’s a day and night difference. Whatever worked for me in 2015 will not work for a fresh grad today, the game is completely different.
But crying about not having a door to walk through isn’t going to change anything.
I graduated 20 years ago and it was different when you graduated just as it is different now. Things change. Economies change. Life changes. The advice I give is simply because that’s the only thing you can change. You and your habits.
I’m all for revolution.
I’m all for socialism w/ a sprinkle of free market capitalism.
I’m all for the better good of all fellow humans.
I empathize with fresh graduates who were told there would be ample jobs in their fields when they graduate 4-6 years from when they started. I struggle to empathize with those who see there are no jobs and do nothing. Anything is better than nothing.
>But crying about not having a door to walk through isn’t going to change anything.
Why is it such a problem for you that people talk about it openly? Why the need to pretend that everyone can have this under control? It seems to me that your advice is just about making you feel better about the situation, about pretending to ourselves that all issues are individual failures, that the world is fair.
I do not see people who argue with you calling for revolution, I am seeing them trying to talk about objective state of the world. You seem to be rejecting that description, because it involves things you or them cant control.
Constructive discussion on what we can do to fix this is welcome but open complaining isn’t going to change anything. It may be cathartic but it’s not productive.
I’m not blaming anyone or saying it’s anyone’s failure. I’m simply saying the only thing you can control is you and so it’s up to you to master your habits and desires so that you can afford a future you want.
Constructive discussion on HN wont change anything either. Moreover, looking at the politics, claiming that constructive discussions is how things are achieved seems to simply not be true. It actually seems like cathartic complaining and making noise has massively better to achieve a change or being heard, practically.
> ’m simply saying the only thing you can control is you and so it’s up to you to master your habits and desires so that you can afford a future you want.
Nah, there is no possibility "future you want" in your advice. It is just about hiding the reality creating vague feeling that people can control things. Even if they cant.
What you are actually saying is that there is no hope for change. Everybody knows your advice wont lead to a change. Worst, if one believes to your advice, they will vote for politicians who created current situation. Because they are the ones constantly blaming individuals for result of policies they pushed for.
"It is just about hiding the reality creating vague feeling that people can control things. Even if they cant."
Still, people have agency. If one doesn't see it like that in relation to their material stance then there must be a lot of things that are simply disconsidered from the list of possible options, for whatever reason. Nobody said the world is fine as is and that the blame is somehow all on the ones that are in unsavory positions now. The world is not fine (and never was, for a lot of folks that almost nobody talkes about). It's winter time in this industry and the new hatchlings have their future in question. Yes, there are factors out of their control (like LLMs) that led to this winter, but there's also the colective decision for a lot of kids of pursuing these cushy well-paid office jobs that made things worse by oversaturating the market. Now, of course that, being saddled with student debt and heavily invested by an already acquired degree, to consider the long-term career prospects outside the industry seems like a non-starter, yet it may be exactly what the labor market (and younglings' individual well-being) needs. Such a decision is just of the same kind as the one that brought them here. That's agency on the individual level. And lastly, it's best for everyone to understand, internalize, and accept (the more the better) the fact that nobody else should be expected to step in and fix things for you. Yes, there are many people trying to make the world a better place (as there are many who don't care), there are also people in power that are even supposed to do the same, yet if they manage or not to make it better for you is not a given. That's, whenever it happens, just a bonus. The rest is up to you, the adult.
This is so condescending and infantilizing of young people. Of course many of them have it hard. They’re not the first, and they won’t be the last, but they’ll figure it out.
I graduated right before the collapse in 2008, and I’ve spent the last 17 years hustling, scraping, and clawing to make, save, and invest every dollar I could. It wasn’t easy, and after a divorce and a recent layoff, it’s still not. Particularly in one of the most expensive cities in the world, with kids and child support.
I worry a lot about my kids and their future economic prospects. I don’t want them to suffer, but the reality is that suffering comes for all of us, and saving and investing has been good advice for millennia. Blaming others and refusing to take responsibility for your own life and predicament has never been good advice. I hope my kids have the strength of character to resist the learned helplessness you’re offering here.
What's condescending is telling a whole generation of people who are working two jobs and barely able to make rent to "save".
I'm older than you and now doing fine AND able to save/invest but after multiple once-in-a-lifetime events that reset all of my progress each time, the last thing I need to hear from some out-of-touch old person is bullshit avocado toast pull yourself up by your bootstraps comments.
Wait, so the entire generation is working two jobs, or they're unable to find work? I constantly hear both...which is it?
And no one here said anything about avocado toast or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Sounds like you're just making assumptions and ranting against a strawman.
Serious question: if your kids were in the situation you're talking about, struggling to pay rent, and you couldn't help them financially, what advice would you give them? What would you hope they'd do? I'm genuinely curious.
So you have two options. One, you can change your habits and save your money. Two, you can get a higher paying job and save your money.
Both options require effort and discipline. If someone working two jobs can’t make rent, then who is to blame for it not working out? Society? The government? Your landlord? Who? Who do you be angry towards if not yourself?
It’s out of touch because they are out of touch. I was out of touch. We all go through this and realize this is it. This is all there is. This is life. Welcome to being fully grown.
As I’ve said before - I’m here for the revolution if that’s what it takes. I’ll be on the front. I’m not rich. I’m not a home owner. I just know there’s only one path carved and they’re at the bottom of the slide hoarding it, taxing us more for each body down.
Capitalism is a disease but it’s been that way for multiple millennia. Humans vs humans. Survival of the fittest. Stuff they don’t teach in private school. Only the school of hard knocks. So, again, who do we blame, if not ourselves? Why do we buy the boomer products? Why do we subscribe to the boomer media? Why do we put up with it?
I'm a bit over 40, not liking parts of my FAANG job, worried I'll lose it, and worried no where in the industry is as fun as 12 years ago, but being on the low end of Fat FIRE makes it a lot easier.
FI is more valuable than RE. After three years or so I got the itch again and decided to self fund my own thing. Also looking back on around 10 years ago more fondly..
Yeah; I've heard a few people say versions of you get bored if you retire early, and I've soon to be retirees talk about how the people they know who retired to go do nothing just wasted away.
I like tech; my challenge now is finding a gig with interesting work and a good work-life balance and p75 pay. That, and knowing when I actually have enough net worth to have more freedom. The problem is you never think it's enough, but not because of greed, but because of fear.
Now I never get bored. Things have changed, but yeah, boredom used to be a real thing that people experienced no matter what their personality traits were.
Haha I'm old! Several up/down-votes and your comment... I guess I struck a nerve? I speak from experience, and I know other people who feel the same way. We may not be typical, but we exist.
At least you could have the decency to debate my comment instead of a feeble insult. My condolences.
I know a lot of people who retired early and are not bored. I know other people who went back to work (not always the same job) just because they needed something to do. People are different. If you need a boss to keep you busy doing something then you shouldn't retire. If you can find plenty of things to do in life (hobbies, travel...) then you can retire. Without knowing you I can't say what is right.
Of course your job/boss matters. Some are worse than others.
Being FI helped me out greatly in December 2020 when My company laid off half of my team and expected me to take on double the load, including lots of extra after hours on-call support. I had a pretty great time not working for ~3 years during Covid. However, I am back to work after an old friend and boss offered me a WFH job that I couldn't refuse. He has since retired so I will stick around until current management pisses me off again, they downsize me or I just get sick of logging into teams/outlook at 7AM every morning.
That advice isn't correct for someone who is just finishing school now. They need to stay alive in a down ecconomy where they can't find a job.
In a couple years when things recover (or at least they find a job) it starts to be good advice. Even then I question max 401k - time works for the young and so a maxed 401k makes for too much money in retirement and not enough to enjoy now. Save for retirement yes, but max is too much when you are young - and if you keep saving will always be too much. Max 401k is good for the rich, or those who didn't start young and so their accounts are way behind.
>Even then I question max 401k - time works for the young and so a maxed 401k makes for too much money in retirement and not enough to enjoy now.
Except the 401k is so tax advantaged that you are foolish to not use it as your basis for financial security. Pre-tax money + employer contributions mean 401k is far and away the fastest method of building up a significant chunk of capital to protect yourself from hardship. Yes there are penalties for early withdraw, but they come out far less than what you would alternately be able to build up with just post-tax savings from your paycheck.
Again, how much money do you need? At some point you are taking a risk, and I don't know any seer/medium/prophet/God/gods who both are talking and I trust (plenty are talking that I don't trust). Even if follow your plan of emergency savings from the 401k, you still don't need to max things out as you should be taking some risk as odds are it won't happen anyway - frankly if things get that bad you should spend more time enjoying life now as your life after that emergency will be bad no matter what and so in the worst case you should save less.
And how are those who are not saving, affording to put down money for down payment and closing costs?
Saving for retirement doesn’t necessarily mean 401k but you can borrow from your 401k for down payment assistance so you really should be saving for your eventual retirement from day 1.
Only if you bid on the same houses. Bid on a smaller house.
Don't forget too that inflation works for you! If you save and get in a nice house early and the STAY THERE (I can't emphasize enough how important this is - sometimes life forces you to move, but avoid it), your payments measured against inflation will go down - just put that difference into a 401k (that is don't do a cash out refinance along the way as so many do) and in 30 years the house is paid off and your have a great retirement account.
When you are in the early years the above plan looks impossible, but time is your friend.
Right, I am fortunate enough to be a homeowner but you do understand that telling a 30 year old with 4 roommates to “bid on a smaller house” is a bit tonedeaf, do you not?
Only to those who refuse to hear it. They will continue to ignore the advice while those who hear it put it into practice and when you’re both 50, they will have their house, a retirement account. While you’ll be bidding on your starter home.
"Why yes I know you're already scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to housing, but have you thought about finding something even worse?"
In all honesty, when was the last time you tried to rent a place to live? My brother makes decent money in his mid-20's and _still_ wound up living out of his car for a couple months when his attempt to find something cheaper backfired.
Yesterday actually. Don’t assume you know someone’s position simply because they give you advice you don’t want to hear. I lived in my car for 6 months. I’ve been through tough times, homelessness, home ownership, all of it. Currently I spent the last 9 months trying to find a new place to live.
Plans fail. Have backup plans. Attempting to min max has disadvantages too. My advice has always come from experience and never “this is what they say you should do”. I would not be so presumptuous.
Others are criticizing you but the reality is that people usually spend more and save less than they could. There are plenty of people with modest income who manage to build a decent retirement. But it takes discipline. You have to be okay with sacrificing for the future.
As an "Old" who was a kid in the late 70s to early 90s, I'm telling young folks that there is no first world poverty like there was then. Not just because "we" were poor, but because you couldn't get "stuff" anyway. Like, the biggest TV I ever saw back them was 25". Nobody had a computer. Unemployment across the board was high. I saw my first kiwi fruit or avocado when I was 10. Clothes were expensive (even thrift / store brand). "Stuff" of any kind was expensive or non existent.
Yesterday my BIL threw a perfectly working tower PC in the recycling because he couldn't find anyone (not even a charity shop) to take it. Last time I was at e-waste I saw half a dozen 42 inch TVs that I'm willing to bet we're working.
However we were wealthy in one way: we had a stable home, and optimism. I may have had old clothes, one pair of worn shoes and a 4th-hand uncool bicycle, but there was no question of ever losing the roof over my head. And there was a future that looked like it was full of possibilities. "Stuff" was getting cheaper and more available. I remember our family being able to afford our first microwave oven. Our first VCR (1991). We didn't get rich, things got cheaper.
Today, it's like we're looking at the future as if we're already post-peak, and it's all downhill from here. There's tons of stuff around but nobody wants it. People have also lost the positive attitude, optimism. It'll get you through a lot of bad times. Years and years of shit. Lose optimism, and it's all bleak no matter how big your TV is.
If I could choose a safe to be reborn in, I'd take "our" poverty of the past over this.
In the part of the world I'm form, my childhood of the 90's to early 00's was exactly the same, and I experienced explosive increase in "stuff" surrounding me. Going from landline phones and phonebooths as status quo - to mobile internet just in 10 years. But I digress.
Your point made me wonder - is it possible that the culture of material wealth - is the problem here? Could we have stepped on a poisonous flower - and now suffocating in the abundance of stuff we dreamed about as young people, now realizing, but not brave enough to admit that there is no meaning in it? And the optimism we had then, was a byproduct of a tighter communities, common struggles and just the architecture of life where we had to interact and care for one another more?
Everyone is worried about AI for good reason but if he's the promise is true then we see significant productivity improvements.
The pie might be shared out worse than even today but there would be more pie.
We are in a period of deglobalisation, but also a period of reorganisation. Today's supply chain is less efficient than 2021s. We are materially poorer as a result. But after the dust settles, it will be a lot more efficient than it is right now. Even with no ai.
Potentially we are in a dip. Stuff for worse, but it can get better.
I'm younger than you - probably median HN age - but I've felt the exact same way for 10 or so years now. Just like you're saying, my generation has it objectively very good from a consumerist abundance PoV. Part of it is lower quality materials and manufacturing, but even if you disregard that factor, it almost certainly still holds. But that increase in material wealth hasn't brought happiness; if anything, it has done the opposite.
The optimism decline feels like it really started around 2001, and the downward curve has steadily continued ever since, down and down. Worst of all, it seems completely warranted, even if you try to look at it as objectively as possible, disabling news-headline-induced emotions as we're all prone to. The world has gotten too complex, everything too intertwined, making for an increasingly volatile and dangerous system.
And besides that major trend, it's also just many of the smaller things getting worse by the year - enshittification of both physical and digital goods, declining government services and so on.
>the reality is that people usually spend more and save less than they could.
You can't save your way out of rent being 70, 80+% of your paycheck. For my area, minimum wage is $18 and your best hope for rent is sharing a $3k 2 bedroom apartment. quick napkin math suggests $2400 take home pay and ~$1800 eaten up between the rent split, utilities, gas, and the most basic rice and beans diet of "groceries". Not even including potential health insurance or car notes or student loans.
If you don't have the fortune of a family who'd house you for free/dirt cheap then you don't have much to save. You're already sacrificing for the present.
Renters, make sure you vote. NIMBY really hurts you when the house owners who vote make it impossible for you to get affordable rent. Rental properties get higher property taxes: rent goes up, or the quality of the house goes down. When cheap apartments cannot legally be built: there are no cheap apartments.
Some of the YIMBY stuff is coming in the form of stricter environment regulations and even union labor rules and high minimum wage. Looking at you, NYC, where building 99 unit buildings and no more is the norm because otherwise the wage becomes $40/hr. It's called 485-x.
There's no escape in the US from the problem. It's either California with weird complicated property tax laws that make no one sell, Texas with unlimited and disgusting urban sprawl, Florida with shoddy construction, or NYC with big headaches tied to strict building incentives for tax breaks.
The answer could be ugly - less regulation, but now you're going red and not blue, which is very much the opposite attitude that many pro urbanization folks tend to be.
I'm not sure, other than I think the issue is that it's not Not Enough Building. It's that we allow investors to buy everything up. In NYC this year, 40 percent of condo transactions were without financing contingency. Explain that one.
> I tell the younger generation the same thing. Save, invest, max 401k, before you go off and party. Your older self will thank you.
401k max is $24,500. How much do you expect a person to earn to be able to max it out? And what percentile income is that at the bottom and top of the age range you consider “young”?
If you are offered a 401k, you have the means to max it out. People who make less than $60k aren’t usually offered 401k’s.
I’m not telling you to forgo partying. I’m telling you to pay yourself first, before you do. Don’t max out a credit card for a trip. Don’t cover the table’s check when you only have $200. Be responsible, but still have fun.
>If you are offered a 401k, you have the means to max it out.
Given rent, saving for house downpayment, student loan payments, auto loan payments, and possible childcare/healthcare costs, I don’t think we live in the same reality (based on income statistics). Perhaps you are only referring to doctors/software engineers/lawyers/IB/PE employees?
>I’m not telling you to forgo partying. I’m telling you to pay yourself first, before you do. Don’t max out a credit card for a trip. Don’t cover the table’s check when you only have $200. Be responsible, but still have fun.
This is very different than:
>Save, invest, max 401k, before you go off and party.
> Given rent, saving for house downpayment, student loan payments, auto loan payments, and possible childcare/healthcare costs, I don’t think we live in the same reality (based on income statistics).
These things all come after savings, not before. If you can't afford them using post-saving money, then you need to get a better job, or a cheaper living conditions. Easier said than done, I totally agree, especially nowadays. But that's the mentality you need to really take saving seriously.
They don’t want to hear it. They don’t understand because they haven’t hit middle aged with nothing. Experience is one hell of a teacher and I hope these young professionals realize what’s at stake. There’s no hand outs.
I hope they realize that they are probably going to have to take their fair share with violence because right now that is probably the only thing the wealthy class will listen to
Not in a democracy where the population age histogram gets top heavy and the old vote themselves more and more of the young’s income, explicitly via taxes and implicitly via backstopping asset prices at the expense of the currency’s purchasing power (since wage increases lag asset price increases).
The old need a way to maintain a socioeconomic order where they can continue to get labor from the young, but demographics are going to make that harder and harder.
You’re not wrong and it’s going to be an interesting next 20 years when there isn’t the young population to prop up the old due to economic depression.
Rent comes after savings? Are you insane? And what if there are no better jobs that allow you to afford both rent and savings, as rent has increased for decades while wages have remained stagnant?
Why can't you just admit that millions of young people are being intentionally screwed out of what we consider to be a basic standard of living?
A younger person shouldn't max out their 401k unless they are rich. When you are young time works for you and so a maxed out 401k is a very large retirement in the future (which you might not even live to see!). The max is useful for older people who didn't start young.
I have known several people who died before they reached 50. I have known a number of others who retired early because the doctor (correctly) said their cancer is incurable - they had 9 months to enjoy all that savings. I knew someone who planed a great retirement, and her health declined such that even though she lived to 76 (just under average) her entire retirement was spent making regular trips to the hospital and even when not in the hospital her pain was such that she couldn't enjoy anything in life (her husband had a few years to enjoy the savings after she died).
If you know for sure exactly how long you will live and how good your quality of life will be then the advice to max out early is probably good. However you don't know - average advice is good for average but if you are an outlier it isn't useful and you don't know. As such you need to compromise and part of that means you enjoy a little more now when you know you can, as opposed to a lot more in the future if you live that long. Exactly what they means is personal of course, but this conflict is why I would suggest a more modest retirement.
In all of those cases, all of that 401k money is freely available to use. They would be dead if it wasn’t for the fact they saved and had it. How hard is this to understand? It’s designed to trap your money on purpose so you save it because you’ll end up spending it and not having the resources for your health in the end.
Besides, once you have a healthy 401k, you’ll realize there’s things you can do with it in the short term. Like borrow for a down payment. Use it for hospital bills. Funerals. Hardship withdrawals. Even a Roth has this. Saving vs spending will always be the story of the grasshopper and the ants.
In all the previous job market contractions the root cause has been money - increasing costs, less investment capital, etc. This is the first time the root cause appears to be tech (if you believe the announcements about layoffs). That makes it different.
Nah. It's not different. Money in the tech industry has always chased the hype cycle. We're approaching the peak of inflated expectations for LLMs and then in a few years the AI industry will crash into the trough of disillusionment. That doesn't mean that LLMs are useless but in many sectors of the real economy they will have only a slow and limited impact.
Its just so weird how demonstrably insane the hype cycle this time around is. Everytime I think ChatGPT and Gemini are improving, it hits me with some monstrously stupid hallucinations. Here's how my conversation with GPT 5.1 went this afternoon:
>Can you please provide a reference for the assertion you just made
>Sure, here it is: <link>
> 404, please double check
> I apologize for the mistake, I have double checked, here is the corrected link: <link>
> Still 404, please always double check a link by actually visiting and reading it
> but not some fresh graduates who can work 80 hours per week and only demand half of the salary
Cause garbage in, gets garbage out. With AI models being all the more rage in the coming years, unexperienced hires will prove many times more costly. (10x garbage with agents).
So companies are going to concentrate their worker base even more with experienced folks. They need fewer of them. Yes. But quality matters more than ever.
I really feel bad for the new graduates. For no fault of their own, the bar went up so high. Unless they’re a child prodigy doing some coding projects on the side since the age of 10 - no one will hire them. So how will they ever gain the experience they need?
Maybe, just maybe, we’ll see a reinvention of coding schools - that will now focus on fundamental and industry knowledge - imparted by other veterans, instead of teaching applied skills.
I agree with you, but I forgot to mention that in the original reply I meant to say that "After the economy turns around, there is no point to hire me, an older guy with maybe a couple of gap years, who worked as a Uber driver for the last two years and can't leetcode".
But yeah, new graduates is going to suffer anyway.
And I'm scared of the collapse of the existing world order. Maybe we won't see a turn around for many years if it does collapse -- and we are already seeing many cracks on it.
New folks will never be hired. RIP to the CS degree.
Old staff will be exited. Especially senior and mid level management.
If you lose your job, you won't get the same comp again. The days of $500K TC are long behind us.
It's the era of downsizing and outsourcing while blaming AI.
None of this has anything to do with AI. That's just a scapegoat.
Google and Amazon are culling entire US teams and rebuilding them in Asia where the cost of labor is significantly lower.
The best thing ICs can do is fight for big tech monopolies to be broken up. (Call your reps leading up to the midterms.) If several members of the Mag 7 are broken up into smaller companies, that'll inject tons of energy back into the ecosystem and enable the wheels of competition and employment.
Bonus - if big conglomerates are fighting to pick up the pieces of a Ma Bell style dismantlement, they won't have time to manage teams 12 hours away.
Nothing against our colleagues in Asia. They're brilliant. But American companies built with American labor shouldn't shut us out in the cold while they reach record profits and continue to hollow out entirely new industries simply by outstretching their arms.
I’ve been told for 20 years that in 5 years my job is going to be offshored. If they could have they would have long ago.
My theory: We had a crazy bubble of hiring during zero rate interest. We are living through a nasty correction. AI is moving the needle too, but it’s mostly being used as a scapegoat to save face and explain away cleaning up failed ZRIP yolo plans that didn’t pan out.
We’ve also haven’t had a serious recession since 2009. It feels like it’s only a matter of time :(
> I’ve been told for 20 years that in 5 years my job is going to be offshored. If they could have they would have long ago.
"This time it's different."
20 years ago China and India had a nascent tech industry. Now they're booming.
Talented folks all over the world - Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere - are working on hard problems.
> We had a crazy bubble of hiring during zero rate interest.
We did. This has had a tremendous impact, no doubt. But by the same coin, ZIRP has had half a decade to unwind at this point. There's other stuff going on. Tariffs, continued inflation, etc.
We're not the only industry offshoring. Hollywood has moved a lionshare of production overseas in the last 4 years. Graphics design and marketing... It's being shipped out at volume.
I was told that once video conferencing got good and internet and infrastructure became better in other places, "this time it will be different."
I was told once universities in other countries started pumping out a pool of great candidates, expats who worked for FAANGs in the US would go home to found their own companies using that pool, and those companies would take over the world. "this time it's different."
I was told during covid once everyone was remote, why would people not just hire the cheapest remote workers going forward? "This time it's different."
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely have seen more and more offshoring over time, but there's a huge inertia behind the US tech industry that's hard to change. The VC / startup ecosystem and all of it's resources have huge Bay Area inertia - it mostly hasn't even spread to the rest of the US, let alone the rest of the world, despite the cost of living and constrained talent pool in the Bay Area. There's something about getting a bunch of people with the same mindset in one spot and having them know each other, socialize with each other, make friends and networks with each other that still matters. Founders tend to build off the people and connections they know and are connected with personally.
I'm hoping it will take long enough to change for me to finish my career. We'll see. This time really may be different :).
EDIT: p.s. Agree totally it's way to complex to tell what's actually happening. The _impact_ of the end of ZRIP, the rise of AI, major tax changes on R&D amortization, and US tariffs pretty much landed at the same time, so who knows?
The difference is, offshoring in the 2000s was largely private sector driven with minimal subsidizes and investment promotion programs lead by countries and their local governments.
On the other hand, in the 2020s, India, Israel, most Eastern European states, Ireland, Costa Rica, and a couple others have launched industrial promotion subsidizes for software offshoring - often providing US$10k-30k per head in federal and local subsidizes along with subsidized office space and real estate and tax windows.
That along with the internal frictions of async work largely being ironed out due to the COVID remote work period along with an exodus of mid-level managers on work visas during the early pandemic layoffs which had an outsized impact on Indian, Chinese, and Eastern European techies in the US made offshoring much more cost competitive and effective than it was 25 years ago.
Putting your head in the sand saying it's no big deal is honestly very stupid if you are hoping to maintain your career for the next 5-10 years in any white collar job.
And it's only going to get even more competitive now that the Indian government is enacting labor reform laws to align Indian labor laws with China's [0], making it even more cost effective for businesses to offshore by reducing regulatory overhead [1].
> On the other hand, in the 2020s, India, Israel, most Eastern European states, Ireland, Costa Rica, and a couple others have launched industrial promotion subsidizes for software offshoring - often providing US$10k-30k per head in federal and local subsidizes along with subsidized office space and real estate and tax windows.
This isn't true either in India or most of eastern europe.
Maybe you are confusing PLI for manufacturing? Altough even that's not on per head basis.
> This isn't true either in India or most of eastern europe.
It is.
Wage arbitrage doesn't move the needle for offshoring once operating costs come to play, and outsourcing companies like EPAM, WITCH, and others juiced their margins by padding heavily, which further reduced the cost competitiveness of outsourcing without subsidies.
Czechia [0], individual Volvodships along with the federal government in Poland [1], state+center in India [2][3], Ireland [4], Romania [5], and others [6] dated list from KPMG which doesn't include state and local incentives) are all providing subsidies for GCCs now which include a payroll/per-head incentive depending on the amount spent in FDI, along with added additional subsidies per industry (eg. Life sciences GCCs get additional sets of subsidies versus a generic software GCC versus a VFX GCC).
The US has some of the weakest R&D tax incentives globally [6], with no payroll or financing incentives - only Vietnam, Philippines, Peru, and PNG are stingier, which has been a major role for why GCC expansion has been rapidly growing for the past few years.
That said, these incentives are primarily targeted at large employers becuase if you cannot provide at the minimum dozens of jobs, then the cost cannot be recouped over the long term by most subsidies. So mom-and-pop 3 person consultancies are ignored because in most cases they are parasites and large firms interested in opening large dedicated headcount offices are incentivized.
I got my first programming job in ~98 while still in college. I had family members telling me then that programming was a dead end and was all going to be outsourced. I lived through .com, GFC, etc... This does feel more like a reversion to the mean at this moment rather than some crash...yet. I feel for the people who only have known a job market that was easy to step into and paid great salaries because they don't know anything else. It's a lot like the people who think they are great stock pickers because they've only been investing in the greatest bull market we've ever seen.
When I came into the job market the rule of thumb was it would take 1 month/10k of salary to find a new job. Over time that moved to 1 month/20k of salary or so. Even then, someone making a FAANG type salary should be prepared to look for a ~year for a new job matching that salary. Being able to bounce from job to job while getting big raises along the way was the exception, and ZIRP only exacerbated it.
You're zooming out and considering this negative sentiment with similar times in the past. I think that's wise. I think we should keep zooming out to other industries. Imagine you're an engineer for GM in Detroit in the 70s - would you consider the mean to be your contemporary middle-class lifestyle, or what it is in 2025? Similar for steel and semiconductors.
It goes for other places, too. Is the US's financial strength of today its mean, or is it where the UK was pre-Suez Crisis? Where Japan was in the 80s?
Let’s hypothetically say we’re all doomed. Say our jobs are going the way of manufacturing in the 70s-80s. What’s the play then?
If I was a new college grad I’d stay away from programming, but that’s been true for a while regardless of offshoring, the job market is just too soft until managers figure out they are killing their senior engineer pipeline and go back to investing in people.
What about the people already in industry? What’s our play?
Live under your means and save as much as possible? Already doing it.
Learn a new trade? Does not feel realistic while working a demanding full time job already, but if things get bad enough, sure.
Use the political apparatus to protect my employment? The system is built to prevent me from doing that. Fighting the system very well could put my employment at risk, which defeats the whole “get what I can while I still can” plan, if I assume doom and gloom on the horizon. I’m also unlikely to actually change anything by taking that risk, so the ROI is horrible.
Is there some other outcome or plan of action here I’m not seeing?
>Live under your means and save as much as possible?
which, while obvious, isn't being done by all of us.
A part of me gets angry that collective action was so unpopular thanks to the view that it dragged down those who could excel individually. Every time I see software people act powerless in front of these steamrolling, enormous tech giants that control every facet of our lives, I think about how much power we had - and are on the verge of giving up.
I also try to confront the future, rather than turn a blind eye to it. Can I be happy and find self-actualisation without this identity and financial status? That's a question everyone should think about regardless of what happens.
I love the idea of FIRE as a life goal and driving financial strategy. The core principal is you save enough money up that the dividends from your investment returns (the FI part of FIRE) is enough to live off forever.
If you hit FIRE, awesome, you’re free from ever caring about offshoring or RTO or AI or whatever again.
If you don’t hit it, you’re sitting on a pile of money when a rainy day comes.
Adding my voice to sibling comments, this is from European experience, I have had several times been dumped from consulting projects, and having to do competence transfer to the offshoring team that would take over our team roles.
This is not the picture I'm seeing on the ground. AI is eliminating certain classes of junior software positions. (Roughly: jobs where explaining a task to junior engineer is more work than asking Cursor/Claude Code/Codex to do it.) Junior engineers can fight back against this by
a) getting really good at clarifying requirements
b) learning quickly, so their work quality is eventually higher than Cursor can work out in one shot.
This is also a pressure against hiring teams overseas: when the bottleneck is communication + taste, not raw implementation cycles, you'd rather have a small local team. And it's a pressure for high TC, because individuals now have much more leverage, although they need to master more skills to take advantage.
Many juniors can't even meet with a human interviewer. There's no point maximizing for interviews that never come. That's the issue.
>This is also a pressure against hiring teams overseas:
This seems to agree with the issue. a team of 100 becomes a team of 5 locals and 95 outsourced work. Maybe those 5 managers are better off, but we're still reducing the local workforce by 95%.
And I doubt the conditions of the remaining 5 are better than pre-outsourcing. You can't out-compensate burnout and QoL. Gen Z in particular seems to really be pushing against this mentality, so this strategy is limited in time even if it's working on Gen X/Millenials.
Being real good does not change the fact, that one is cost factor and at the end only a row in payroll spreadsheet. Junior with low salary and low compensation during layoff -> priority departure.
Having in couple hours unannounced meeting. My boss told me over private channel, that he just got fired. It’s very interesting and the home mortgage does not really help today. I was really good. Better than expected and accomplished few optional projects. Looks like it didn’t help again.
> learning quickly, so their work quality is eventually higher than Cursor can work out in one shot.
This sounds almost word for word like The Onion’s classic: Secretary Of Labor Assures Nation There Still Plenty Of Jobs For Americans Willing To Outwork Robots
Wow. That is ... too painful and true to life to really be funny at this point. But, ok, still funny.
To be fair, I meant something a little different -- something like -- learn how to be a robot priest who can get it to follow the desperate prayers of humans. And, like, how to unstick the robot arm when it accidentally punches through a wall. Etc.
Not that that is particularly comforting, in an existential sense. Maybe buys you a couple years till you have to pivot again.
That was the bottleneck in the industry when it was in growth phase, it's a mature sector now and it's all about efficiency and profit now. Speed to market and product iteration speed isn't the most important thing anymore, there's not a lot of innovation taking place. Outside the actual novel AI specific companies out there, of course, there are a few other spots of growth and exceptional companies but largely the kings have been crowned.
Show of hands for anyone seeing AI replacing juniors (and I assume also backfilling employees).
I'm genuinely curious.
I've heard this argued the other way too. Seen it firsthand.
Fwiw, we've had good engineers switch to vibe coding and it's ruined their output.
From really solid systems to unmaintainable flocks of seagulls - nested if statements ten levels deep with no thought or care. From good engineers that are just dialing it in now.
We've had good engineers use vibe coding to save to time to work on their side hustles. Then go on to try to raise money for AI products.
I lead cloud consulting projects as a staff consultant specializing in application development.
I use to need myself to lead the project, customer management, design work and some development. I would add usually another developer to do some of the grunt work coding and usually a cloud architect to take care of infrastructure as code, security, etc.
Not that I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to do it all myself, I just didn’t have time. GenAI can definitely do CloudFormation, Terraform or the AWS CDK (ie using a high level language like Typescript instead of Yaml) and can do the code where I really don’t need two other resources or deal with the detailed requirements and coordination.
Before the pearl clutching starts about my not knowing how to code without AI. I’ve been coding consistently since 1986 when I was a hobbyist assembly language coder.
> We've had good engineers use vibe coding to save to time to work on their side hustles. Then go on to try to raise money for AI products.
this is honestly what i think is going to happen as everyone is still figuring this out and why for large companies i think they are walking into a giant ass trap and the execs can't or don't care to see it as long as it boosts the stock.
most people (read: MOST) working at X corp aren't going to be using AI to accelerate their work, they are going to "phone it in" like you said or buy themselves more time to do other stuff. i think with the onslaught of vibe and slop most people don't have a vested interest to go above and beyond to ensure quality as long as it works, even experienced devs. that's honestly probably what i'd be tempted to do.
where we see the most exponential gains will be people who are paid enough to care, smaller teams that have a direct vested interest in long term success (founding teams, etc.) or people paid to just clean up a mess.
hiring and the landscape will be super interesting to see in the next year or so. probably team structure will change drastically as well.
Yeah pretty much. Engineers are going to be at a crossroad where they either turn to the government to finally build in some proper labor laws and other obvious controls (how about re-banning stock buybacks?) or go out to the Wild West and hope they idea can sustain their livelihood.
Given the vibes of the community here: I guess I'll look for a Mad Max mask (I'll ofc keep performing my civic duties, though).
A big tech breakup needn't be anti-capitalist. In fact, it might be the most pro-capitalist move.
If you're an entrepreneur or VC, you want big tech broken up because they can put serious price pressure on your exit.
Trillion dollar companies can easily spin up a team to copy you, with no incentive to stay alive. They can threaten you with all kinds of leverage - access to customers, patents, legislators. They can give you an ultimatum to sell for cheap, go to your competitor, etc.
Their scale and reach is additional unexpected gravity on your delta V.
Capitalism is supposed to be hard. It isn't supposed to support invasive species that can graze anywhere they please and kill ecosystems of diversity and innovation. These mega conglomerates can just throw themselves into markets using unrelated business unit profit and suffocate real companies.
Breaking up Google and Amazon would be good for everyone, perhaps even shareholders and ICs at those companies themselves if value is unlocked. Let alone all of the other companies and entrepreneurs in the market.
I think it depends on which kind of entrepreneur you're aiming to be. VC breakups are amazing if your goal is to box in and become a market competitor. But as of the last decade or so there's been plenty of "incubators" to take into account. startups whose goal is instead to be sold off to some major company and get their payday that way. Those kinds of models would deteriorate, and are likely what want to prop Big Tech up.
I do hope we have more genuine competitors fighting out there for breakupps. But it's hard to say these days.
> But as of the last decade or so there's been plenty of "incubators" to take into account. startups whose goal is instead to be sold off to some major company and get their payday that way. Those kinds of models would deteriorate,
Good, because this is an extremely toxic and damaging version of capitalism
Every company should be seeking to stand on its own, not become assimilated by the borg
This is pretend boogie man. Banning buybacks will not automatically make that money flow into hiring or salaries. Companies are not charities, they exist to make a return. If hiring people and/or paying more will generate a larger return than giving the money back to shareholders either through buybacks or dividends, then companies will do that.
AI is now giving companies something to do with excess cash that could generate better returns (shareholders believe so) and buybacks are being pushed out as money goes elsewhere[1].
>Banning buybacks will not automatically make that money flow into hiring or salaries.
Nope, but that's what trends show us from the decades between its ban and bans being lifted. All I know is that companies flowing money back into itself and having executives shift in and out every few years clearly hasn't worked.
It's just one stepping stone to make sure companies have skin in the game again.
You can argue dividends but that means the money gets taxed quicker, so that also helps the people.
>AI is now giving companies something to do with excess cash that could generate better returns
Sure, for now. I think that problem will fix itself sooner than later, so I'm not too concerned about that. Trends come and go.
Stock buybacks are designed to let the shareholder see the same upside, but decide when to take the taxable event. Long term gains are also preferable to non-qualified dividends.
Even worse for non-American stockholders of American companies - the IRS charges a 30% foreign withholding tax on dividends. If you ban stock buybacks in favour of dividends, it’s a big tax increase on foreigners, so US stocks lose a whole pile of value for American stockholders when foreigners dump American equities until the ROI equalizes. (Roughly 20% of US equities are foreign-owned.)
Dividends don't grow the stock as quickly. They can and will do that, but the goal is to change the incentive structure back to long term growth and not "stock buyback and dip from company in a year".
There is no evidence to indicate buybacks reduce long term incentives for executives compared to dividends.
If anything, all the businesses with the most long term growth have done the most buybacks because they are paying the employees in stock, which employees gladly accept because they bet the business will have long term growth.
And executive compensation is not vested until business targets are met a few years in the future.
> There is no evidence to indicate buybacks reduce long term incentives for executives compared to dividends.
If I am bonused on earnings per share, and I have a button to increase earnings per share mechanically (without needing to increase revenue or decrease costs), why wouldn't I push that button?
Can you share some evidence around your statement? i.e. "There is no evidence to indicate buybacks reduce long term incentives for executives compared to dividends."
> If I am bonused on earnings per share, and I have a button to increase earnings per share mechanically (without needing to increase revenue or decrease costs), why wouldn't I push that button?
Examining fantastical scenarios is a waste of time. No one has that button, there is a whole board of directors that votes on these things, and again, compensation is staggered over various performance targets staggered over a number of years. The proxy reports detailing these are easily accessible with an online search.
> Can you share some evidence around your statement? i.e. "There is no evidence to indicate buybacks reduce long term incentives for executives compared to dividends."
Reality. The businesses that have the best long term performance over the previous decades are the ones that have done the most buybacks, hence buybacks do not cause short term-ism. It’s just as easy as a business cutting expenses now to juice dividends in the near term, we’ve seen it time and time again with businesses that sacrifice quality and innovation in the short term which eventually cede ground to new businesses.
> Reality. The businesses that have the best long term performance over the previous decades are the ones that have done the most buybacks, hence buybacks do not cause short term-ism. It’s just as easy as a business cutting expenses now to juice dividends in the near term, we’ve seen it time and time again with businesses that sacrifice quality and innovation in the short term which eventually cede ground to new businesses.
So no source(s) then?
Your statement is just as un-evidenced as mine, so I'm uncertain why you seem to be so sure of your statement.
> Examining fantastical scenarios is a waste of time. No one has that button, there is a whole board of directors that votes on these things, and again, compensation is staggered over various performance targets staggered over a number of years. The proxy reports detailing these are easily accessible with an online search.
If I can reduce the number of shares, then I can increase EPS. Buybacks reduce the number of shares. The button clearly exists, and based on watching this happen it's clear that the button gets pressed pretty often.
> The businesses that have the best long term performance over the previous decades are the ones that have done the most buybacks, hence buybacks do not cause short term-ism
This is mixing up cause and effect. If I have lots of free cash flow, then I can do buybacks which increases EPS. Lots of free cash flow is associated with better performance, which is perhaps why people believe this.
> New folks will never be hired. RIP to the CS degree.
We've just hired a couple of graduates, with the expectation that they are going to take some time to grow.
What I'm seeing right now is a huge influx of candidates from large companies that have zero skill. I'm not exaggerating, they can't code anything. And it's not just AI, they started working before ChatGPT came out.
Others in the industry are seeing the same and it's quite likely that your resume is getting lost.
One practical advice for resume writers from me. PLEASE, just don't put stuff like "Improved the API responsiveness by 23.123897%". Unless it's a crazy number like 100x.
We posted a job a year ago for a dev. We received terrible candidates, but still tried to fill it from the pool. 2/3 ghosted the interview and the other I'm not sure had ever done anything in iOS. I just pulled the job instead of wasting more time. I'm planning to post another job in the new year and I'm not looking forward to wading through the garbage.
> What I'm seeing right now is a huge influx of candidates from large companies that have zero skill. I'm not exaggerating, they can't code anything. And it's not just AI, they started working before ChatGPT came out.
This has been true in software for decades. From the very first time I was senior enough in my career to start conducting interviews on the "employer" side of the table, we've seen a huge number of candidates who literally (in the literal meaning of literally) could not code. Like you would ask them to write a for loop, and they froze up and couldn't do it, or just started talking, hoping we would move onto more "behavioral" questions. This has been pretty much a constant in the software industry for as long as I've been in it.
> Nothing against our colleagues in Asia. They're brilliant. But American companies built with American labor shouldn't shut us out in the cold while they reach record profits and continue to hollow out entirely new industries simply by outstretching their arms.
What makes you think people in Asia wouldn’t benefit from more competition in the market as well?
That said - I feel that advertisement based markets will always consolidate. There is too much of a benefit to having a single network which has the largest reach in terms of audience to show ads. This will always create incentives to consolidate over time.
Then again, why make the perfect the enemy of the good. Getting to more competition is a good step.
We gotta gather ourselves and remind companies why they once paid handsomely to not let potential disruptiors run rampant on the market. Long term new teams will form once productivity is valued again and not this giant incestuous GDP-maxmizing scheme.
I doubt things will recover to 2018 levels. Too many new software devs coming out each year, too much AI, too little big company growth once everyone already has an internet computer in their hands. The Wild West is over and now the digital economy has entered the boring phase.
The comparison to greenhouse gases doesn’t make sense. Corps pay a lot for developers right now because they get more value out of them than they cost. As long as that remains true, devs will be fine.
> I think we ought to be keeping people trained and employed
I never understood this sentiment. We don't have a massive manual weaving industry anymore, 95%+ of people used to be farmers in 1900. Tech comes and replaces humans, and the transition can be extremely painful especially for the people replaced, but ultimately it's better than keeping people artificially employed in obsolete jobs.
(I don't think SWE will be obsolete, but even in this case I'd rather switch careers)
Most deindustrialized regions in the West haven't recovered to full prosperity and are quite depressing to live in, sometimes even 30-40 years later: US Rust Belt, Wallonia in Belgium, the French North East, etc.
At a large enough scale, most people don't really move on, their lives are wrecked and they just suffer through them.
This is predicated on the myth that people can re-skill and move into new industries. Sure the former can happen and people can learn new things. But we're talking about an economy where there are no new industries. And an economy where you have to work in order to live.
What's a software developer in their 30s, 40s, and 50s supposed to re-skill into? Take on debt for the rest of their lives and re-skill into a profession (if they can even afford to take several years out of their lives to go back to school)? Into blue collar work along with the salary cut for which they might not have the physical capabilities for?
There's no social system for providing the necessities for living.
The other side of it is skill. Human societies have lost knowledge before. We've had to rediscover various aspects of metallurgy before. We could lose the ability to understand the technology we've made if we trust everything to the LLMs. There are already vibecoders who don't even be able to review the code that it generates for them because they're starting to lose the critical faculties and skills to understand it.
Or, more dystopian take... it won't matter. If software reliability continues to degrade in a normalized fashion, it won't matter. First mover advantages and networking effects will make it impossible for an outfit trafficking increased quality to ever get enough breaths to even compete.
Depends on your definition of “compete”. Compete for VC funding and continually increasing growth? You’re right. Compete as in stay profitable and have a future? Less clear-cut.
I saw this coming way before AI became a thing around 2016 when I was 42. Software development was becoming a commodity where there were plenty of “good enough” developers where no matter what, it was going to be saturated.
If someone is trying to sell themselves as an undifferentiated developer in 2025 or later, it’s going to be an uphill battle unless you can lean on your network.
At 51, if my only differentiator is I can code, I’ve done something horribly wrong in my life.
Anecdotally, I found software development adjacent roles quickly when I was looking both last year and the year before.
Software developer salaries went up significantly after 2016 and it was a super hot market for developers in 2020. So whatever you saw wasn’t a good indicator.
It's easier to lower standards than to raise them.
There's always a race to the bottom. I don't think it's a big leap to suggest that what's considered the "minimum viable product" has decreased over the years. It's also no secret that software is getting worse.
As to salaries, I think you forgot how things worked before. The reason companies like Google introduced free food and all the incentives was because increasing salaries was not a better way to attract better talent, since salaries were already high. So either now something has changed where better talent cares more about money or we're attracting talent that cares more about money. As in either the same people changed or we're attracting a different type of person. Personally, regardless of age, regardless of field, I've seen a strong correlation with the best people not caring as much about money. Once the salary is good then they care more about how interesting the work is or how they can reduce stress in their life. Money matters, but it has decreasing utility as it grows.
I feel this is more true in the sense that when they don't care about money you can get them below market value and not that they are better. I find the most valuable employees to be the financially literate ones. The ones who're constantly thinking about the money aspect.
'Will we get more customers?'
'Will they be more likely to stay with us?'
'Are we screwing ourselves out of sales by offering to host a server for remote control on the PC connected to the tool, even though it's cool and we can implement it in a week?'
I'm more on the 'do it because it's cool' side and have had to be wrangled a couple times with such questions since what makes interesting work for myself often doesn't align with client needs or hurts sales, as stupid as it might be.
I have had 10 jobs over 30 years and I am now at only the third company where I gave two shits about the company’s success or saw it more than just a stepping stone to my n+1 company.
I agree with you completely. They can just keep giving me cost of living raises and respect my experience and opinions (not saying they always have to go along with them) and I will be the last person here if they shut the lights off.
I work in a consulting company where I lead projects and I have an almost obsessive commitment to seeing the customer happy within the constraints of our contract that I wouldn’t even think I was capable of earlier in my career.
I pay close to attention to my employer’s goals and strategies and stay aligned. I lurk in our sales Slack channel and care very much about how I can add revenue even though I know it wont make but a little difference in my comp.
FWIW: the other two companies I cared about deeply were startups where my opinion was respected and they gave me more autonomy than I could have ever expected. The first I was leading a project for their largest customer and the second a decade later I was just kind of thrown the reigns of our cloud architecture strategy even though I had no experience at the time.
I think that's an important thing to note here, where the loyalty lies. Viewing from the lens of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy it's clear you're loyal to the goals of the company more than the organization of company. Which in that case yes, I agree those are the best employees
You just made me do a deep dive on “Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy”.
I had to think about this. The three companies I’ve actually cared about were those that I had already “won” the organizational rat race within my definition of winning. The first I was leading their largest project only because near the end, they had laid everyone else off. “Winning” was staying employed until the market picked back up after 2009. The company went out of business late 2011. I stayed until the bitter end and then did a contract with the customer that I had been working with.
The second I was already the de facto cloud architect and I “threatened” my CTO that I would quit if they ever made me a team lead. I only got that because I volunteered for the initiatives and I stuck to it until I figured out what I was doing and did a lot of research. The company only had 60 people at its height including project managers, managers, QA, analysts, sales and developers.
The current company, I’m already at the top IC level and have the highest bill rate as a US based consultant. I was bought in at that level. I’ve repeatedly asked my manager what my goals should be a s he said basically - keep making the customers happy and bringing in money through being billable.
The others I was a cog in the wheel and would have had to play the politics game to get ahead. I’ve always sucked at that.
It was very much bimodal. If you were working in BigTech or adjacent, that was definitely true. If you were working in enterprise dev like most of the 2.5 million+ developers working in a tier 2 city outside of the west coast in the US, comp was definitely stagnating.
In 2016, I knew I had to do something when my (step)son graduated in 2020 and my wife was willing to move anywhere the money took us.
It just so happened that a job fell into my lap at AWS working (full time) in the consulting department. I am no longer there. I now work at a third party consulting firm as a staff consultant specializing in app dev.
Yeah someone joining a good company as a senior engineer in 2015 would retire with about 15M in assets now assuming smart investments (say... half on big tech stocks, half in market indices)
Someone joining now on the other hand, might have to resort to physical work at some point in the next ten years of things go south.
If you are working for boring old enterprise companies like banks, airlines, insurance companies or even most YC funded companies, “senior” developers will top out at around $160K-$170K inflation adjusted in tier 2 cities.
I spent my pure developer career [1] in Atlanta GA. Well known companies based there like Home Depot, Delta, Coke, and GE Transportation are paying their top developers around what entry level developers getting in BigTech.
But choose your non west coast city and you will see the same.
Sure, just save 100k out of your 170k comp, that's totally how normal people operate. And not only that, also pick the right stocks rather than just sticking everything in an index!
I haven't got to 10m yet, but I saved 70-80% of my take home pay since ~2008 and I have enough to quit at any time and live the rest of my life without working. That is just by investing in the 3-fund portfolio and without the crazy SF salaries.
Before Covid, I lived on about 25K a year since I had a paid off condo then. Now, I am renting and live on around 36K a year. I realize my situation doesn't work for everyone. Some people cannot fathom not buying a new phone and computer every year and a new car every 3 years.
Also, now, I am fully working from home so that helps with saving on gas and not eating out as much. I make my coffee every morning instead of Starbucks on the way to work and I make my own lunch and dinner 95% of the time.
You could have looked up the numbers for indices yourself, but here you go -
S&P500 -> ~4 million
NDXT (top 100 tech) -> ~14 million.
> just save 100k out of your 170k comp
Yes, that was my starting salary, and that's almost exactly what I saved.
This calculation assumes your salary is somewhat constant and maxed out as the person I was responding to claimed, but in my experience you can expect your tech salary to double every ~5-6 years.
NDXT went from ~2300 in 2015 to ~12500 in 2025. That's ~5.5x return. So even if you had your whole 1M saving in 2015, you'd only have 5.5M now. No idea how you get nearly 3x that?
And it's way worse if you take the actual scenario which is 100k added every year instead of starting with the 1M.
S&P500 is worse yet, at about 3.5x total return if you had the whole million at the start.
Really appreciate your comment, literally the only comment in this long sub-thread that picked up on the nonsensical numbers fooker put out.
Realistically fooker's investment strategy into NDXT of 100k over 10 years would have produced around $2.5M depending on exact timing in the year and partitioning of that 100k. Way less than $15M nonsense. Also would have required extreme conviction alike the crypto types and completely counter how typically multi-million portfolios are managed (diversified).
Also, who needs 15M, at 5M net wealth there honestly is no reason to be working at a $200k/year job. You'll make way more after-tax income even assuming lousy 5% yearly return thru capital gains. Same story for 2.5M @ 10%.
Counting on 10% returns long term is way to aggressive especially when you have to consider sequence of returns risks during withdrawals. Even 5% is not conservative enough while you are in the withdrawal phase.
If I had $5 million of investments outside of my home, would I work? Maybe? My job is far from stressful, I work from home, I “retired” my wife over 5 years ago when she was 44 eight years into our marriage so she could pursue her passions and we could travel a lot.
All of my friends still work so what could I possibly do with my free time that I don’t do now? The only restrictions that not working would lift is that we could more easily spend an extended amount of time outside of US time zones.
> Counting on 10% returns long term is way to aggressive especially when you have to consider sequence of returns risks during withdrawals
Yes though the propose is not to retire. There's better things to do with your life (IMO) than work a standard 9-5 job for some corporation once you've accumulated sufficient wealth to have financial independence.
> Even 5% is not conservative enough while you are in the withdrawal phase.
Assuming you spend 5% per year. 5M@5% is 250k, 200k+ after tax for CG + eligible divs. That's a lot of money to spend every year, more than most families get to earn thru their labor yearly. Can be secured against downturns with higher 4%+ bond allocations too. 5M is financial independence for vast majority of households. 2.5M can be as well for many if their baseline spend remains at 100k.
> All of my friends still work so what could I possibly do with my free time that I don’t do now?
Financial independence provides vast opportunities for those with ideas but lacking time. There's a reason most businesses are pursued by those who have financial wealth on their side.
That’s true. I said “top out at”. When I left AWS working in the ProServe (cloud consulting division) in 2023, I was seeing “architect” positions in Atlanta - I didn’t live there any more, but most of my network was still there - topping out at $175k. But for “senior” developers it was even less.
I obviously decided to stay in consulting and work full time for a third party consulting company.
$170K a year after taxes is $9900 a month net if you are living in GA - with fairly low state taxes. I calculated this on paycheckcity.com. That’s without taking into account health insurance cost.
So to invest $100K a year let’s say some pretax and some post tax, they would have to live off of $1700 a month. They are not going to be buying a house with that.
As far as wealth through equity in a house, that’s not liquid. What are you going to do borrow against it?
And actually I can speak for one of the best case scenarios for buying a house. I had a house built in 2016 in the most affluent county in GA for $335K - a 5 bedroom, 3.5 bath - and sold it in 2024 for $670K and moved to state taxe free Florida and bought a condo in 2022 for half the cost (we kept both for awhile)
Even then, we could only do that because my (step)kids were both grown and I pivoted to customer facing cloud consulting in 2020. A niche that hasn’t suffered from the return to office mandates - ironically enough except for AWS ProServe (former employee) and Google’s equivalent internal department (who has been trying to recruit me for years).
Most people won’t and shouldn’t be picking individual stocks. Of course it’s easy to be a genuis saying what would have happened if you picked stocks that went up.
> There are plenty of people who have managed to do this, from fairly normal tech jobs.
Yeah, but there also isn’t enough wealth in the system for everyone to do this.
Like suppose that a) we’re now at a reasonably correct valuation for Nvidia b) assume a hypothetical where everyone in the US had plowed all of their savings into Nvidia in 2015. Result: The market cap of Nvidia is still $6 trillion, and the median American owns less than $10k in Nvidia stock.
Sure, but there was nothing stopping people with $10k in savings in 2015 from buying Nvidia. If someone with $10k in savings had bought Nvidia in 2015, they’d have $2.5m today. But that only works for a relatively small number of people before the $2.5m is no longer $2.5m - they’re all drawing from the same $6 trillion pot. “Everyone with a good tech job” is accurate, but besides the point, it would work exactly the same if you limited it to “everyone who’s a plumber” or “everyone who’s a fedex driver”, but literally cannot work for everyone at the same time.
> it would work exactly the same if you limited it to “everyone who’s a plumber” or “everyone who’s a fedex driver”
Yes, "Everyone with a good tech job" has a significantly higher chance of keeping or holding tech RSUs, and have conviction that investing in tech is going to pay off.
> but literally cannot work for everyone at the same time
Yes, that is how the world works. Anything that makes you successful would not work for everyone at the same time.
> Yes, that is how the world works. Anything that makes you successful would not work for everyone at the same time.
To me this reads as a particularly misanthropic view of the world that only considers zero-sum (or less than zero sum) actions.
Any investments in yourself that aren’t at the expense of others (education, exercise, diet, therapy, living space improvements, etc., etc.) or investments in family and community, benefit both you and others and would work for everybody; indeed, many such investments would work better the more people undertook them, rather than the fewer.
If more people bought Nvidia stocks, the value would be higher. If everyone bought, something would give (and that is exactly what we are starting to see).
170k after taxes leaves you with about 130k net, maybe 140k; if you live in a big city and have a family, it's almost impossible to save 100 grand of that 140k. More realistic you would save about 50k and still come out ok, but lets be realistic noone is saving 100k from 170k gross salary
In GA, after taxes your take home would be ~125k. So you think someone can live in a big city like ATL for 25k/year? What if they have a family? Ok, are you assuming their spouse is also in tech and making at least similar? The 125k also doesn't have healthcare deducted yet.
Some of the comments on this thread highlight just how disconnected many people were/are from everything outside of the FAANG bubble.
If you live in an expensive city and do not have a proportional salary, obviously you are going to save less.
> Ok, are you assuming their spouse is also in tech and making at least similar?
Yes, suppose spouse contributes to household expenses, but assume separate savings and investments for this calculation. Do you see you'd easily get to 100k saved?
The difference between having a large fraction of your savings in your bank account versus invested for the last 10 years can be quite a few millions, which is what most commenters here are failing to see. I'm sure the story was different between 2002 and 2012, but that was not what I talking about.
Ok, so you need 2 people working in tech making near top end salaries for the area? You do see how this simple idea of saving 100k/year isn't so simple for anyone outside of FAANG?
I managed to save about 100k per year in Denver and Salt Lake City with mid tier tech and govt lab jobs. I'm suspicious of the claim that Atlanta is significantly different. From what I have seen, it's usually bad financial decisions.
And for context, saving about double that during and post COVID by obtaining a remote job where the employer does not discriminate by location too much other than for maybe career growth.
I posted calculations. $170K a year after taxes is $9900 a month before health insurance. To save $100K a year since only some of it would be pretax means you are living off of around $1600 a month.
And while I work remotely, remote jobs are getting more scarce and more competitive. Every job gets hundreds of applications within the curse few hours.
> If you live in an expensive city and do not have a proportional salary, obviously you are going to save less.
I assure you that my hometown in South GA (a cheap city) didn’t have $170K a year developer jobs.
A friend who moved to Columbus GA after college in 1997 I doubt is making $170K now.
I know my friend who still lives in Atlanta and is a lead developer at Home Depot (one of the few F500 companies based in Atlanta) just crossed around $170K and he has been there 10 years.
> At 51, if my only differentiator is I can code, I’ve done something horribly wrong in my life.
I think software is going through what scribes went through when education went universal.
At one point, just knowing how to read and write gave you a cushy job. It didn't matter what, maybe you were in government, maybe you were a clerk organizing trade.
Somewhere in the last 20 years, this happened with coding. At the start of the millennium, knowing how to code meant you could fill some role. Now, everybody knows enough of how to do it that it's assumed for many roles, just as reading and writing is for every office job.
The thing is that there are enough people who are good enough enterprise CRUD developers - especially for remote roles and/or outsourced developers - that it’s hard to stand out from the crowd or command increasingly higher salaries. Gen AI has made the problem worse.
Even if you are targeting a major tech, if you are trying to differentiate yourself by how well you can reverse a btree on the white board, there are plenty of people who can do the same. It’s not a differentiator that you have previous experience in BigTech any more. So do thousands of others.
For me, I saw it happening around 2014. I was six years out of the long fog of my “expert beginner” phase and trying to figure out what I was going to do next. I was considered a “senior” [1] full stack developer and no matter what I did - mobile, actually learn front end better, I was still going to top out at around $150K (and sadly enough, that is still what I’m seeing in Atlanta when I lurk on LinkedIn).
I knew I had to get into BigTech or adjacent after my son graduated as a software engineer.
Around 2016 I belatedly discovered cloud consulting where consultants would come in and “transform” organizations. I learned in hindsight that they were a bunch of old school net ops folks who only knew how to do bad lift and shifts that costs the company more money and treated AWS like a Colo.
I wanted to do the same but focus on what I learned the term for years later was “modernization”. Bringing in a software developers mindset on cloud consulting. By 2020, I was no longer thinking about BigTech and was focused on getting into consulting. I had never heard of AWS’s Professional Services department until a recruiter told me about it. Even then I didn’t know it was full time working for AWS directly until that was also explained to me.
[1] yes in hindsight I know that a title of “senior” to someone who pulls well defined tickets off a Jira board is laughable.
Your competition isn’t new grads. It’s experienced engineers in other countries who will work for half your wage in your own city on an H1B or similar.
You're half correct. H1Bs in your own city aren't working half your wage.
However, engineers in developing countries will work half your wage, remote from their home, where that's a great salary where they live. When the average annual salary in India is the equivalent of $4,200 USD/year, there are a lot of talented engineers there that if they don't win the H1B lottery, will end up working for big tech remote.
You're mistaken thinking those engineers aren't facing the same market downturn. AFAICT, it's exactly the same in Europe. The only difference is that in Europe folks weren't paid exorbitant salaries like their US colleagues were.
>Reality is not particularly rosy for new graduates AFAIK
I looked at the statistics[1], and while you could argue new graduates have seen worse (recent grad unemployment is actually lower than much of the 2010s), you can also see that in contrast to previous periods where new grad unemployment is lower than all worker unemployment, this time around new grad unemployment is actually slightly higher. However if you look at the chart this wasn't a post pandemic phenomena. The gap has been closing since the back half of the 2010s, and doesn't show much of a spike after the release of chatgpt, so "AI" isn't a good explanation either.
Break it down by degree. You're losing some important information in the aggregate. Going to degree you see that Computer Science has the 7th highest unemployment rate: anthropology, physics, computer engineering, commercial art & graphical design, fine art, sociology, computer science, chemistry, information systems & management.
Of course you also need to look at underemployment too. Which CS is on the lower end of that. So you have to consider things like that even though there's a higher unemployment rate than performing arts (2x) there is far lower underemployment because people expect to get jobs in their field for CS.
There's more you need to look at too. It's not so easy and you shouldn't just use such a high level approximation if you want to make sense of the data.
Hiring lab has some more interesting information to like the number of postings. CS is way down from "prepandemic" levels, but unfortunately only goes to 2020 (hence the quotes).
TL;DR Gen Z is "slightly better off" in pure financial status compared to older generations , even with inflation adjusted. But the distribution on what got cheaper overtime and what got more expensive is causing the true strain among Gen Z.
It also helps to explain a bit of a generation clash when you see how older generations can chastise the younger ones over what were "luxuriies" when they were that age. The entire market is flipped.
> why are companies going to hire me, who have gap years and are older, but not some fresh graduates who can work 80 hours per week and only demand half of the salary?
Given cost of living, I have a hard time believing young people come out being cheaper. I live in an area with cheap rents and my mortgage is still less than the average price of a one-bedroom apartment in the area. My cars are new and paid off, and I have pretty much all of the stuff I'd ever need in my life. Plus, no student loans.
That might be one of the real root causes of the job market for new grads being shit. The amount of money people need to meet their basic needs has skyrocketed, and young people bear the brunt of the burden. The only people who can readily afford to work too cheap are those with parents who can continue to support them to a degree.
At least in the US we haven't had official data for quite some time. The BLS lost its chief because of "bad numbers"
The numbers we do have show significantly worse jobs numbers compared to prior years.
We might get data again, maybe not, but the US government has had an internal revolution, and it's doubtful we will have data as good as in the past, and it's quite likely that any bad news will be deeply buried.
Since its a Sunday night during a holiday weekend without any big breaking news, I would suspect that's probably just a bunch of people that had automated sales at $90k, or something similar.
A common pattern is: people (I supposed I mean: investors) are somewhat worried that markets are over valued. They ponder, think, research, binge-watch Prof G videos... Then they travel to have Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of in-laws. Market gets discussed over cigars. If they get a confirmation signal from the brother in law attorney or sister in law dentist that they are worried too...then after mulling it over on the flight back to Denver...the market dumps on Monday.
Love that HODL optimism. Looking at the longer charts there seems to be support around $80k so maybe. This could just be holiday shopping. The timing of economics with this though has me worried the support will falter causing a sell off and Monday’s bell will be a bloodbath.
For a look at the shopping economics, this year's bfcm at stripe is pretty fun! http://bfcm.stripe.com people are selling off Bitcoin to have money to buy stuff, and that link is an inside baseball look at how much stuff is being bought.
I have zero optimism for BTC, hold zero, and can't imagine a circumstance where I'd ever buy some. (Though perhaps a few more years of current US policy and USD will be so terrible that BTC starts to be more attractive...)
I see that Tokyo stock markets are way down today, that's probably what's driving lower BTC?
I believe you’re in the minority here. Perhaps your experience is different because of your skill set or the market you’re in. Anyone that I know personally who got laid off (in tech) took at least 6 months to find a job. I don’t know about anyone else but that to me is pretty brutal. More so as the people getting laid off are mid career, some with kids.
Edit: Add to the above that companies like Walmart are seeing an uptick in high wage earners becoming their customers, and McDonalds seeing a shrinking population of low-wage customers.
It’s easy to infer the rest from there. People who used to do well are cutting expenses and those who were already struggling are..I seriously don’t know what they’re doing. Where do you eat when you downgrade from McDonalds..Wendy’s? It’s a sad state of affairs.
You ask, "Where do you eat when you downgrade from McDonalds..Wendy’s? It’s a sad state of affairs." On the off chance that this isn't a joke, you need to know that eating out is very expensive in the US, even at McDonald's. According to the obviously highly credible https://mcdonalds-menu-prices.us/ a Quarter Pounder With Cheese costs US$7.99 now. I think home-cooked rice and lentils costs about US$0.20. Other similarly low-cost foods include polenta, homemade bread, homemade mayonnaise, zucchini, spaghetti, sunflower-seed cheese, homemade peanut butter, onions, potatoes, etc. Those numbers aren't even the same order of magnitude.
the advantage of fast-food over groceries, is that you don't have to worry about spoilage and waste. So the delta is probably less than you think. Now granted McD is an s-show, they are no longer the restaurant of the poor, You likely can get a better burger meal deal at a Chilis than a McD, as sad as that is.
Even if you waste half your groceries its still cheaper than eating out. And wasting that much is difficult to do, most staples will last weeks to years without risk of spoilage.
There are some fresh fruits and vegetables that are exceptions because they dont take well to refrigeration or freezing but really not much.
Flour comes in sacks, meat comes in cuts - we've a quarter lamb in the freezer, part of that in the fridge, and yeast and flour enough for bread for the next six months.
We shop cheap, like the family has done for the past 100+ years, much of our food comes from the garden - our excess gets swapped with others excess (we have a lot of fruit, we never buy eggs, they come from people that can be bothered to run chickens).
It's a bit of work, we save money by not going to a gym and our life expectancy and cancer survival rates are much better than, say, middle north America.
To cut mbfg a bit of slack here, your approach doesn't work in all situations. I admire your functioning community and supportive family and the fact that you've got time and space for things like gardening.
If people can't live like you do, it's probably because they've been placed on some kind of economic hamster wheel, and rather than figure out how to get a quarter of a lamb their better bet is to emigrate or to disrupt the system that's making McDonalds feel like a relevant factor in a survival equation by building the kind of community that you're describing. That's a big ask if you've never been part of such a thing (I know I haven't).
Sure, we live in an isolated area and have evolved through years of not even having a shop (well, I got to see one finally ~ 1980 or so). My father as young pre-teen helped support three younger siblings and a mother while his father was away at war by trapping rabbits and all that.
I had eighteen months as an isolated single parent with near zero support (long story) and had to stretch a marginal budget during that period. I've also travelled through the more remote parts of more than half of the 190+ countries across the planet, sorting logistics for food, fuel, et al along the way.
What I can pass on as hard earned lessons are that fast foods are rarely the cheapest or heathiest in the long term - if you can track down a large volume slow cooker in any garage sale or op shop on special you can keep a never ending stew on the roll by throwing in damn near anything, potatoes, celery, beans, carrots, bits of meat, swedes, etc.
It's hard to disrupt a system, difficult to break patterns and build communities and establish areas to grow food - but home cooking and stretching out food is something that can be found across the planet in the most unlikely places. Worth the effort to look for examples and make a few moves.
We're lucky to buy and prep all our food in bulk - it's more expensive on the infrequent shopping days, it's substantially cheaper over the course of year.
It's not something we need to do in current circumstances, it's a habit kept up in case it's ever needed and being frugal where possible means more to spend elsewhere.
This is just wrong. Beans and rice are more than an order of magnitude cheaper than McDonald's per calorie and they're non-perishable. Combine that with whatever fruit and veg is affordable fresh or frozen, a bit of cheap seasoning, and you're still coming out ahead.
You obviously need access to cooking and storage facilities to eat like this, but the target audience of McDonald's is the time-poor, the resource-constrained, or the depressed and disabled, rather than just the money-poor.
IMO, I think it breaks even, but eating out saves a lot of time! Healthier cooking at home? Yes. I studied this for myself (N=1), and my cooking is about US$10/meal give or take (asparagus, chicken, rice, water to drink). If you cook for two or more people, then I think cooking at home comes out ahead financially.
>cooking is about US$10/meal give or take (asparagus, chicken, rice, water to drink).
You must be eating an absolute TON to eat $10 worth of chicken, asparagus, and rice. I just checked the prices at Target and rice is $1.89 for 2 pounds, chicken thighs are $1.69 a pound. Asparagus is spendier at $5 for 1 pound.
How many pounds of chicken and asparagus are you eating? Even if you ate two pounds of chicken and the entire pound of asparagus you aren't hitting $10.
...and add the time for preparation, cleaning up etc.: Thats one of the most frustrating things when cooking for one person - you invest 45min to eat 5min and the rest is "organisation & logistics"
45 minutes is crazy. I have a chicken and rice dish I can make in 20 minutes (yes, I've timed myself because I'm weirdo and enjoy those chef shows). It takes 20 minutes because that's how long the rice takes. It can be faster if I use shrimp instead of chicken (more expensive though) and noodles instead of rice. It also makes ~3 servings.
Wow, i got downvoted for complaining about my cooking times on HackerNews, this is a real innovation:
so:
- 5 min walk to supermarket
- 10 min in there
- 5 min walk back home
- washing & cutting wedgetables 7 - 10 min
- maybe cutting some meat: 5 min on top
- eating 5 - 10 min
- cleaning up the kitchen 5 min
Haha...I didn't downvote you, but 45 minutes to cook seemed crazy to me unless you're making something new or complicated or you're socializing. You also kept eating separate from cooking in your first post.
I don't count the walk to the supermarket since even if you eat out almost every meal, you still tend to need to go to the grocery for items either way. And if you eat out, you still have to go there and back.
Cutting should be in parallel with cooking. Similar to cutting, cleaning should also be in parallel with cooking. For example, my knife and cutting board are washed, dried and put away before my sauce finishes simmering down.
That's why when it's just me I don't really do much cooking. I'll eat ultra-low prep stuff like toast (w/beans, hummus or avocado), bagged salad, frozen food, or grilled tofu.
I believe the long-term average in the US and UK was somewhere around 20 - 25 weeks so that's still broadly in line. Not trying to dismiss anyone but there is a cacophony of voices about the difficulty in finding jobs but hard to ascertain if that is any different from normal or we just got used to a boom cycle (ex Covid) and that's causing the disconnect?
Some anecdata from Belgium: the software market is dead. Hardly anyone is hiring. Rates have plummetted. There are (virtually) no startups. Big corpos are hiring in Southern and Eastern Europe instead, when they're not outsourcing to India.
Unlike some of the US commenters, our high tax rates and lack of stock-options driven reward schemes means that most of us don't have enough money in the bank to casually found a startup.
> Unlike some of the US commenters, our high tax rates and lack of stock-options driven reward schemes means that most of us don't have enough money in the bank to casually found a startup.
That's because it effectively is gambling. Maybe if you are one of the first 50 employees in a startup that is one of 100 to reach "unicorn" stage, you have the chance to strike it big... but then you are 0.01% of all employees of startups.
The 99.99%? They'll have had their company fold or let them go due to the company "pivoting" or "having to look better in quarterly reports", they'll have left voluntarily for one reason or the other, or they'll have been let go right before the vesting period to save the company money and end up with nothing vested, or the company will have gone to three, four, five or more rounds of funding watering down existing options, or the company will have gone bust... all while having traded the "chance" of striking it big for lower pay, thus reducing payments into our tax, social security and healthcare systems.
Europe does not like gambling with the lives of its citizens and the stability of our systems.
I've been lead to believe that, in lieu of startup founding cash in the bank, there's a better social safety net, for use in cases like these. Is that not the case?
There is a pretty good social safety net, at least in Belgium. Though its funding is under pressure due to high spending and taxes being pretty much maxed out already. And while I could probably start a company and be reasonably sure that I won't go homeless if it fails, by virtue of that social safety net. The social safety net doesn't give me the cash to hire my first couple of engineers.
This is a bit of a caricature of course. Banks exist. Startup accelerators exist. There are places and ways to get funding. But doing it with your own savings is virtually unheard of over here.
I've been unemployed for quite some time as a software developer with 13 years of experience.
The unemployment agency of my country tries to help, but the reality is that the amount of new jobs every week is staggeringly low since end-2024. The agent on my case was herself honest about the prospects. It's even worse for younger developers or very old folk.
I tuned into my old freelance network in Germany and the account manager told me they're seeing 60–70% less freelance work in tech.
I could get a job in the odd thing here and there, so I'm not immensely worried yet, plus it allows me to stay home and raise our baby. But I think everyone around me is worried, even outside tech.
I live in Finland, with over 10% unemployment according to official statistics (second highest in EU, just after Spain). From what I can tell, things really suck especially for fresh grads. There's fierce competition for jobs like cashier at supermarket, hundreds of applications for one position is normal. Lots of fresh grads with bachelor's or master's degree compete for those jobs too, since they can't find anything better. Also, of the few open positions, many are the kind of "rental work" that offer only limited hours a week, at unpredictable times.
So, this is what an objectively bad job market looks like in Europe.
Is having temporarily high unemployment that bad? Sure, demand is not as sky high as it used to be but doesn't mean people won't get a proper job eventually.
Imo it shows that you consider your people valuable and have a strong social safety net, so people are not forced to accept the first job that comes their way and compromise on pay or what you want to do.
I'm sure those grads could get underpaid crappy jobs the next day if they had to, but the point is they're not forced to.
If you can't sort this out in a couple years, then you have a real problem.
> If you can't sort this out in a couple years, then you have a real problem.
The problem is, we've been in an era of the polycrisis for decades - first 2007 the financial crisis thanks to the US subprime loan market, then the Euro crisis, then came the refugee crisis 2015, then the second refugee crisis 2018, then Covid, then the Russian invasion, then the Israel-Palestine war, and now Trump.
And the last three and a half crises are still going on simultaneously.
There has been no recovery period in which things could settle and those who got left behind could catch up, it was straight from one crisis to the next.
>out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along.
The Titanic had 3 days of warning and took 3 hours to sink. A large ship takes a long time to do anything, be it turn or drown.
If you've been following the breadcrumbs in pretty much any industry (especially tech), you know the market isn't in a good shape. If you're looking outside expencting to see the world burning, you gotta wait another 3 hours (or hope someone steps in first).
I know 4 people who were laid off this year. 2 federal government (1 contractor) and 2 large corporate. Entirely anecdotal, but the data I see isn't good.
The downturn of the economy, as a whole, is very real while simultaneously we are doing "just fine".
The "just fine" part is that our stock market is doing quite well, and those who are already wealthy greatly increased the velocity of their wealth. The flip side is that everything is too expensive, including labor, and we have to cut corners to make line go up. Most companies, by this point, have been more or less stripped for parts in pursuit of growth. Most are stagnating or experiencing negative growth now, because obviously, except a key few.
And those key few are pretty much holding everything together. Speculatively. Based off of the promise of growth without labor.
> but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along. Not great guns but still ok. The interesting thing is how much is internet chatter a leading signal for this thing now than in previous cycles?
It's really interesting to read both this comment and the featured article because my recollection is that one of the big reasons Harris lost in 2024 is that Democrats kept saying the underlying economic data was fine but voters felt things were bad, even if they weren't (the so-called 'vibecession'). Maybe also a bit of distrusting economic experts. So which is it? Are voters just being illogical and should trust when others say the economy is doing fine? Or is there something not being captured in economic data that validates people's concerns?
IMO the shift towards AI was very detrimental to the job market, because every company started to work on their AI strategy and not on their core competencies. This has resulted in most companies failing to materialize their AI strategies, while burning their cash. One of the reasons for this is that the average company competes against Goliaths that have infinite funding.
At first many companies stopped developing mobile apps and I think mobile app devs were the first hit.
Second, the frontend developers were hit because of how the AI can generate good enough websites, however, they aren't hit as hard as the mobile developers.
This has spread into most parts of the stack with a variable impact.
My dev friends could find English speaking jobs but everyone else is struggling. Some are moving away, compromising, or nervously watching the end date of their unemployment insurance. The salaries actually went down since last year if I'm not mistaken.
>...but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along.
I don't know that the official data shows things "still bobbing along." The graph of monthly employment numbers looks like it has a decidedly downward trend overall. September jobs were unexpectedly high, but we've had a lot of subsequent downward revisions and it may happen again for September.
looks like a return to post GFC pre-covid trend. That's sort of what I mean, we've obviously come from a boom-ish market and correcting. How much of it now is the shock that now isnt the same as the 2021-2023 market v this is the start of a real downturn. I don't know
Based on the numbers we had before the BLS clammed up, all sectors except healthcare is going down. But yes, tech is one of the bigger slumps. If your job isn't to help take care of the aging boomer population, you're not having a good time.
I work in games and have the occasional slump. But this time is much different. all staffind agencies for temp work in my city pretty much said there's nothing out there. my local area is pretty much a bunch of fractional janitorial roles and that's it.
You mean spending all their time looking for a new job, applying for various benefits, doing side work as much as they can, at pay far lower than they're used to so it takes more hours of gig work to reach equilibrium?
Is this saying something more about the relative expectation of compensation bands?
New grads are unlikely to have a comparable benchmark.
People who've worked in Big Tech and finding themselves applying to regular companies where the revenue per employee is in the $200k range are likely going to have difficulty adjusting to such.
I work in the public sector and make very low six digits. Others I know have compensation that is 3x or 4x what I make while working in technology industries.
If both I and the people I chat with were to find themselves suddenly out of a job, I suspect I'd find an acceptable job elsewhere more easily than they would because anything I did would be a pay raise while anything they took would be a pay cut. This in turn translates to that I would be the less risky candidate (that I wouldn't be looking for a new position that would pay more within the year)... and thus I believe not only would I be more likely to accept the job I would also be more likely to be extended the position.
Browsing reddit there are a lot of people on cscareerquestions (and similar) who have the mindset of FAANG or bust as a new grad. That they wouldn't even consider working at a company like Little Cesar's or Home Depot despite those companies having open positions.
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Furthermore, this gets into a lemon market situation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons ). Where it becomes harder to distinguish a good candidate for a poor one and that can only be found out after someone is hired, the companies that have people are more afraid of hiring a lemon than so don't hire anyone. This further depresses the market for the highly skilled candidates. Additionally, people who are skilled are less likely to look for a new job because the market is depressed and they're not as likely to get a good position afterwards.
> Is this saying something more about the relative expectation of compensation bands?
I just want to survive and I can do barely that. If you want a reference: I'm a single male who went from 160k salary to nothing in the last half of 2023. My necessary expenses were 3k a month (70% of that being rent).
Since then I lived in 2024 off of 50/hr freelance @ 15 hours a week. or... 3000/month. You see the issue here. Savings got obliterated, credit built up. But I figured I'd pay it off quickly if I just got any job to supplement the freelance work. not a 160k job per se. I could have found some local 60k IT role and been just fine (if a bit overworked with two different jobs).
In 2025, after a year of circuses in the job market I settled on a 20/hr 20 hour role to supplement the freelance work. So things are "stable" now... as long as I don't get sick, or the car doesn't break down, or a variety of other life factors (spoilers: I did in fact get sick. Which lead to me finding the 2nd part time work).
Like I said, I just want to survive. As is, I'm working for a third or so of my old salary with zero benefits and much more stress.
I understand how that goes. In 2009 I lost my job making $85k (it would now be $130k in 2025 dollars)... and I was unemployed for a little under a year. I got a job where I made $25 an hour (40h a week with time and a half overtime) as a software developer (in a city where the median per capita income was $36k/year - and yes, I verified that with the federal reserve stats - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/categories/3008 ). In 2015, with no meaningful raises and a bit of burnout I got a job in the public sector for $80k and have since been promoted and am making a little bit over $100k (different city, median per capita income is $75k/year).
Salary-wise, I'm making less than I did when I lived in California in '09 (and that's salary - stocks were a nice bit more and public sector doesn't exactly have an ESPP).
It may be necessary to move to get a job that pays $80k a year with 100% in the office expectations. Yes, it sucks. It's hard. Finding a job in '09 was not fun and I expect that similar conditions are to be found today. However, there are jobs out there when one considers what would be D tier companies and presents themself as someone isn't going to leave in a year for a higher salary somewhere else (before the implicit ROI of onboarding has been paid off). With the prevalence of job hopping and the "this resume does not match the applicant" issues, companies have become very risk adverse.
This is the comment chain to which I was responding:
csomar: Also people who can’t find a job tend to be more vocal than the rest.
fragmede: Are they perhaps more vocal because they have *a lot of time on their hands?* (emphasis mine)
me: You mean spending all their time looking for a new job, applying for various benefits, doing side work as much as they can, at pay far lower than they're used to so it takes more hours of gig work to reach equilibrium?
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So, what I was responding to was the implication that unemployed or under-employed means that you've got a whole lot of free time, which can absolutely, positively be the opposite of true.
If one had a job that previously made end's meet and now all they've got is gig work, they're probably filling ALL of their time just to survive, and are probably still coming up short. That's what I meant.
There are several factors which contribute to the "rosy" official picture:
- A lot of people participate in the gig economy instead of getting registered as unemployed.
- AI has eroded a lot of employment opportunities for graduates, i.e. people relatively active on social networks.
- Official data can be horribly inaccurate (phone surveys in 2025, seriously?) with grossly outdated models (remember the recent huge revisions?). Political pressure does not help here either.
- The unemployment stats do not account for significant downgrades in salary and working conditions. They will show the same picture for a person with a cushy office job and the same person working 2 jobs in retail from paycheck-to-paycheck.
Think it's a filter effect. The areas getting hit especially hard happen to overlap strongly with the most online, which is a relatively small part of the economy overall - and, if you get cut, you've got a bunch more time to to talk about it, which amplifies things further.
Plenty of other areas doing OK for now - construction, healthcare especially - there's no shortage of money around, it's just not going into tech projects outside of the AI bubble.
From my experience, it's grim at the moment for software developer jobs. I got laid off in August and it's been rough. I'm in my early 30s so I can't compare it to 2008, but I've been laid off before and I've never seen it this bad.
It's grim everywhere, for everything, all at once. I haven't been able to find work as a graphic designer, motion designer, web designer, web developer, software developer, and a large variety of retail jobs. Been on the job hunt since May, all I've been able to find is a part time position at The Home Depot.
I gotta tell you man, if you can find someone in charge at the backend of the Home Depot and let them hire you as a systems uptime troubleshooter you would easily make any salary you could name for them tenfold.
I at at a Home Depot like 10 times a week and let me tell you, they have a major systems problem that is making their operations look like a joke
Funny you mention, I'm actually working on that, too. There's an internal career portal with a large variety of backend jobs. No interviews, follow-ups, or anything yet.
Home Depot is a chain, so the backend is probably being handled from some R&D center somewhere. Your maneuvering area at the local home depot is probably pretty slim.
Back in the early 2000's I did consulting work with Home Depot's backend developers. Their office is the "store support center", which is in the NW suburbs of Atlanta. I remember the team as being very good, but surprisingly small.
I've worked with a vendor listing products in their IDM (Item Data Management) System. IIRC, it's from https://www.stibosystems.com/ . From a SMB vendor supplying one type of product it's frustrating to work with, with a lot of back and forth and workflows for verifying all manner of compliance with data quality, global regulations, and laws. From their internal perspective, it's probably the bee's knees, supporting a wide variety of taxonomies, considering the variety of products they sell & support, some rather dangerous and hazardous.
From looking over the shoulders of the staff, some aspects of the system that I've seen as a supplier are directly visible to them too.
>you would easily make any salary you could name for them tenfold.
>I at at a Home Depot like 10 times a week
And yet you still go to Home Depot, so from their perspective it's not an existential issue. Probably the biggest thing companies have learned recently is that they don't need 99.99% uptime, people will accept degraded performance because "that's just how technology works".
I am at 10 different supply stores too, Lowes, Ashby, Truitt and I get a shit ton of stuff delivered.
Everyone competes on price, so when I see everyone at Home Depot with their thumbs up their asses because the computers are down, I know that Ashby is eating their lunch on the margin. I'm sure Home Depot has enormous economies of scale that make up for it, but this is a current issue.
I think it's still a mostly correct conclusion. Pretty much everywhere you look across services, they've been cooked to their bones. Have you noticed that supermarkets seem to have, like, 1/5th the employees they did before? Since when is 1 open lane on a Saturday night and a 30 minute wait acceptable?
Well, since we've accepted it. Everything kind of sucks and barely works, but it doesn't matter, because we ultimately put up with it.
~~~Problems on purpose because they don't spend the time to fix it IE not going to hire anyone to fix shit because they still make billions this broken way~~~~
By "200% tax" surely you're talking about the fact that my boss just paid (as he was compelled by law to) a licensed plumber a 3-digit sum to tee the coffee machine into the water line for the fridge ice maker...
Offshoring has been a thing for decades. Seriously, Yourdon wrote a doom-and-gloom book about it in the 90s. It was called “Decline and Fall of the American Programmer,” published 1992.
Then in 1996, he wrote “Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer.”
The software industry is extremely fad-driven. During the pandemic, the fad was to hire programmers. That created a lot of busywork and coordination jobs that didn’t contribute to the bottom line.
Then Musk bought Twitter, laid off a bunch of folks, and things kept running. So the trend became “cut the fat.” In fairness, there actually was fat to cut.
Now boards are in cost-cutting mode and fantasizing about AI, so the pendulum has swung back towards offshoring. But that cost-cutting focus is going to lead to stagnation and self-cannibalization. Somebody’s going to buck the trend, have a splashy success, and the herd will trample back in the other direction.
>But that cost-cutting focus is going to lead to stagnation and self-cannibalization. Somebody’s going to buck the trend, have a splashy success, and the herd will trample back in the other direction.
Yes. But sadly, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
And I feel there's going to be a huge storm to survive first. I imagine many may not even make it to the next shift.
> Then Musk bought Twitter, laid off a bunch of folks, and things kept running.
I'm not sure you can give credit to Musk here. Buying a company and cutting all R&D to "juice" profits isn't his invention. Twitter is really around still in spite of his efforts as opposed to because of them; other CEOs might be doing layoffs but they're also not going out doing sieg heils. As well as he really fired them for fealty reasons and not economic ones.
It should be very telling that Grok came out of X.ai and not X. Ultimately, Musk did have to reverse some of the layoffs although with a bit of slight of hand so that Twitter could release any sort of new products.
It's not "his" thing, but he and a few early layoffs certainly made it trendy to do so. It's a small club, so seeing any "members" take any action is a sign they should follow suit.
Offshoring affects the pipeline. That means once people leave the workforce or get promoted there are no locals who’ve the acumen to take over as those roles are overseas. Now you have to hire them H1Bs because you don’t have locals with the requisite experience. Of course managers wonder why there aren’t Americans with experience to fill those roles …
People will roll out the trades whenever employment is mentioned, but do you have tradies in your family? Do you have friends who are tradies? It's not easy to get in, it takes a long time to make journeyman, and work can have seriously spotty periods no matter who you are. Fact of the matter is, it's not really an alternative to anything except other types of bluecollar work.
It's easy to get a foot in the door to any of the trades but you're gonna slog out 5+yr of doing "bitch work" before you even have a chance to make real money because that's the nature of the licensing systems that these trades have that are enshrined by various degrees of law.
About the same amount of time most people spend in college and at least you're making a little money.
Like anything, it's important to spend time networking and building a reputation for doing high quality work. This gets noticed as it does in any job and will get you better opportunities and better customers.
Trades have a higher percentage of people at the bottom tiers who have trouble showing up for work on time and sober. Avoid being associated with that and you can rise fairly quickly.
The problem is, for construction, trades and what remains of agriculture the competition is brutal. It's a low-skill job in terms of prior required education which means there is a looooot of people without degrees flooding into that market already, and then comes immigration that's further driving the wages down because (again) it's work that doesn't require much education or language skills.
I've done a stint in construction (I think y'all call it "civil engineering", aka digging trenches and moving soil) myself, it was rare to find Germans - most of my colleagues came from Eastern Europe.
Believe it or not, I've been in construction/remodeling for 35 years. We currently have 3 home remodels going on at the moment with more down the road. I've never experienced a slow down. Even during COVID.
I'm not your typical HN member I don't think. I've been a computer nerd since I was 14 years old. I come here to stimulate my inner nerd.
being in construction for 35 years must mean they're already in the place that does the layoffs (instead of being laid off) by the time things get bad. You can easily say things don't slow down when you're divorced from the increasingly strained workers with less hours and benefits doing the construction.
Seconding this, I work as a SWE for a large construction company, while the IT department is small considering the large scope of the company as a whole, but we’ve been extremely busy. Construction is absolutely booming.
How did you get into construction/remodeling, and how would someone best reach out to this community? I have been thinking about some construction related ideas (mostly around prefab automation and sales) and haven't the slightest idea how to reach these types of people.
I am always curious about people who are strongly oriented towards one thing (computing) but somehow wind up in another area, such as construction.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I worked part time for my neighbor who was a master electrician. I learned the basics with him.
My parents divorced when I was 17 and we were forced to move away.
My mother was an assistant manager at the apartments we lived at. I turned 18 and just so happened the complex she worked at was hiring someone to do make readies, (painting and repairs on vacant units before new move-ins).
The management company my mother and I worked for sent me to various classes over the next several years (electrical, plumbing, HVAC and pool maintenance) and my supervisor was an old HVAC tech. I learned a ton from him.
By the time I was 22 or so, I was promoted to maintenance director.
I got bored with apartments and wanted more. I started doing side work and met a lady that owned lots of rental property. That opened doors and she introduced me to other investors. Eventually, I was able to leave the apartment industry and do my own thing.
It just kind of blew up from there.
As far as your construction related ideas, just put yourself out there. Meet people in the industry. Go to local industry related events. See if the city you live in has real estate investor clubs. DFW has a few and it's a great opportunity to meet people.
This is also a great way to pick up work. Rent houses are always needing things repaired or replaced.
I know Mueller metal buildings is always looking for sales people. They were even looking for an IT person not too long ago too. In the rural area of Texas I'm in, we finish out lots of them and seem to becoming more and more popular in recent years.
I'd posit a potential reason that these fields are currently hiring is a combination of that it destroys your body without recourse and many of these positions require certifications that take a long time to achieve (either through apprenticeships or training programs). You will also generally not get any kind of meaningful benefits from these jobs, and your body will disintigreate before your very eyes as you work yourself to bone for a pittance. The compensation for these roles is poor in comparison to white collar work despite the perceived demand for them, there is no safety net in many cases (401k, pension, reasonable health insurance, etc. outside of union shops, which are rare outside of say welders and pipefitters (and getting rarer every day!)).
And frankly the work is miserable. I've crawled through suspended ductwork to run conduit and wiring in antifreeze recycling plants that were filled with god-knows-what reagents covering everything in dust thick enough to paint a clown. PPE be damned, my skin burned for days. It was hot, loud, cramped, wet with chemicals, uncomfortable, dangerous, and unpleasant. These jobsites are the bread and butter of blue collar anything; awful and dangerous conditions outside of your control, but required by your contract because not doing it means not getting paid.
Sure, an agent isn't going to be replacing the poor bastard who has to do that, but is our only response the the deliberate and systematic murder of the white collar job market "you can suffer for less money so you'll be fine"? That's a pathetic whimpering way to just accept the very loud and public murder of class mobility.
> there is no safety net in many cases (401k, pension, reasonable health insurance, etc. outside of union shops
Residential construction is the absolute bottom of the barrel. It is trades equivalent of webdev monkeys flinging javascript poo at the web. You get benefits by not sucking and getting out of residential and into something else.
Genuinely curious: How else would you coordinate a large software project? We have 7 teams of 5 working on the same platform and Jira is fine for what we're doing, but I've been at this almost two decades and I haven't used any of the alternatives.
Besides like trello asana redmine or the millions of less-complicated competitors? You literally have developers work on their own modules directly from the spec or work directly with the product owner. You track their work by looking at their commits. You check their progress by looking at how the preview build / staging looks. No overhead of having developers flesh out an entire issue/story (plus sub-issues) and then move it column-to-column across the entire Kanban board. Tracking sub-issues is like counting half-pennies instead of rounding up.
As someone who is currently delivering Amazon packages with their own vehicle (Amazon Flex), what’s the process like to become a mail carrier? The miles are starting to take a toll on my car, so delivering for USPS is tempting for me…
I would definitely try this if the vehicles in Phoenix ran cleaner. The old ones have such bad smelling exhaust and you are always breathing it because of the semi-open cab.
It's funny how everyone wants to get into deliveries as they get older, my dad who's been an engineer for decades talks about it a lot. Something about walking around and doing things really appeals to people as they reach the end of their engineering career
First off, the pay for a tenured mail carrier is plenty for me, and I feel like I have a full life.
I take martial arts classes, yoga classes, have nice apartment, eat what I want, have a decent car, etc.
I really don’t want anything, except ridiculous things no one can afford, like sure I’d be up for buying a Cathedral and converting it to a $20m house.
——
Liquid 3 years (savings plus liquid investments). 2 years in IRA. Set to inherit somewhere between 20-40 years worth.
I just have to work to make ends meet, let my investments mature, and eventually inherit.
It feels weird because I love my parents, but it’s something to plan around nonetheless.
I continue a tech career making 200k+ a year and you try to sell me making 100k or less probably for the next 20 years as a win? Nah I love money to much and hella money is like 10m+ where I would chose something that in the next decades would make me so much less. Also no trajectory in career path. I'm happy it works for you but I wouldn't like that. On the other hand I have my big corpo wageslave job and my little own company and almost no free time sadly. I hope to have made enough money and can retire early at some point until then I grind.
Same story here. I work in games so it's always been boom or bust. It's real bad now.
- out of college it took 3 months to find work. It sucked, took over 100 apps, but I found a nice project.
- after that project ended, 3 more months (but less stressful because I had more than one role I was interviewing with).
- Then layoffs, another 3 months in 2022 where it was very competitive (I was in at least 4-5 interview pipelines before my first choice accepted my offer).
- Then that studio quickly shuttered and I haven't found anything full time in 2.5 years. Freelancing kept me up until that wasn't enough, and then I found some non-tech part time work.
working harder than ever with 2 jobs + more portfolio work to prepare for interviews despite having 9 years of experience now. This feels worse than the horror stories I'd hear when finding my first job.
Game dev acquaintances here in Belgium and back in Turkey say it's never been so bad. Studios aren't shutting down but also not hiring over here. Your industry is not having a good time…
I think it's largely industry dependent. Robotics/embedded/etc is actually doing quite well, lots of hiring in space and other fields. More big-data focused fields aren't hiring as much, and it's going to be even harder if you're applying for more senior/VP roles
I'm seeing like 80% of software dev applications at my company are H1B/OPT, like thousands of candidates - and they're getting hired just because of the sheer numbers they drown everyone else out. So yes, they are 100% taking jobs. A lot of them. I can't comprehend how there are so many.
Probably a step in the right direction. But if you can hire someone abroad for 20% of the cost of an American worker, then instead of replacing one American with five workers, you replace them with four.
The range difference really depends on where you are too. Unless you're chopping wood, you still need competent people with the right skill set and ability to communicate. When controlling for that I find it's much closer unless you're in SV/Austin/NY.
The 100k fee on new applicants? drop in the ocean.
The h1b people spend (most) of their salary in the USA and pay US income taxes. Whereas overseas labor spend their salary over seas and pay no US taxes.
My pet theory is that we are experiencing stagflation, but only people >70 years old have ever really experienced it before, so most people are just scratching their heads wondering how it’s possible that stocks keep going up (inflation) while jobs are disappearing (stagnation). I am most definitely not an economist, nor am I qualified to play one on tv.
> My pet theory is that we are experiencing stagflation, but only people >70 years old have ever really experienced it before, so most people are just scratching their heads wondering how it’s possible that stocks keep going up (inflation) while jobs are disappearing (stagnation).
We do not seem to be technically experiencing stagflation,ir really either half of it, on a national scale, as we appear to still be in a weak aggregate economic expansion and inflation, while higher than the 2% target, is fairly mild at around a 3% annualized rate [0], and, in any case, stocks going up is not inflation (unqualified inflation, which is the inflation part of stagflation, in consumer price inflation, not asset value inflation.)
OTOH, we are in a very weak economy especially outside of the leading AI firms, and there are quite likely both wide regions and wide sectors of the economy which, considered alone, would be in recession, and while inflation is fairly mild, it is high for the last couple decades and being in near-recession conditions. So, for a lot of people, the experience is a something like stagflation (and there are lots of signs that the economic slowdown will continue alongside rising inflation.)
[0] though as economic statistics are only available after the fact, either of these could have changed, but the real defining period for “stagflation” in the US is the 1973-1975 recession, years which saw a minimum of 6.2% inflation (the term was actually coined in the UK for conditions which saw a massive drop in GDP growth rate, fron 5.7% annually to 2.1% in successive years, but not an actual recession, alongside 4.8% inflation.)
>we are in a very weak economy especially outside of the leading AI firms
Isn't that part of the cause? It sucks up so much investment, there's nothing left for anything else. Or at least nothing without such perceived upside.
Either they pull it off and you're replaced by AGI, or they fail to pull it off and you lose your job to the resulting economic implosion.
> It sucks up so much investment, there's nothing left for anything else.
Tariff-inflated input costs combined with weak consumer demand are the reason the rest of the economy is slow, and the reason there aren’t places woth strong and near-term upsides for investment dollars to go. AI being the only thing attracting investment is the effect, not the cause.
My sense is that AI is the one area where boards cannot justify cutting back on investment. If there were no AI boom the rest of the economy would still be getting hammered.
There is still a lot of tech investment, deal making, and hiring going on. It has just left the USA.
The definition of inflation since the 1970s has changed significantly e.g. owner equivalent rent. What many people describe as inflation is the change in base cost of capital purchases which has demonstrably risen at a substantially faster pace than baseline inflation see housing/car/education/healthcare prices.
Economic thought today is that rising asset prices relative to wages are not a sign of inflation. They can be attributed to lower cost of capital, increased dollar production of assets, lower risk profiles, and other aspects. However when observing housing prices and education prices which have seen declining utility over the years - it may be that we simply lack an appropriate word for the divergence of capital prices from wages, productivity, and risk.
There is an undeniable societal impact of this divergence, individuals become less economically and socially mobile. They maintain a net debt rather than net asset count for longer, they may be either practically or perceived as locked out of societal progress.
My theory is that all money which could have been invested else where went to AI. It can end up either in investments paying off which will result in AI investors becoming even more rich (poor don't invest in the 1st place) and the rest of society poor or investments will have no returns and it will be wealth destruction on a grand scale and everyone will come poorer afterwards.
>only people >70 years old have ever really experienced it before,
Part of the observations from the HN reader on the current situation in Finland (believe everything he says, "canary" of Europe?):
>things really suck especially for fresh grads. There's fierce competition for jobs like cashier at supermarket, hundreds of applications for one position is normal. Lots of fresh grads with bachelor's or master's degree compete for those jobs too, since they can't find anything better.
In the USA this was one of the exact "unexpected" developments in the Nixon Recession that was like no-one had seen since the Great Depression. Except that depression there were not yet enough college grads in existence to contribute as a major statistic.
By the mid-70's I'll never forget the crowds vying for a single job opening at a gas station. Pumping gas and cleaning windshields when most stations had only converted half their pumps to self-service. Some with advanced degrees, it was not pretty. These were always minimum-wage jobs too, like supermarkets and fast-food.
When I started working there was a chemical plant within 25 miles where I could have gotten a job easily if I had graduated a few years earlier. Founded in the 1950's by one of my professors, it was actually pretty advanced. The placement office said they hadn't seen an opening in over a year. I was lucky to get a job at an appliance dealer because he liked my ability to program, but he never got a computer the whole time. Otherwise I wouldn't have got noticed, but the job was to prep merchandise for delivery so I was in the warehouse installing a lot of icemakers and doing minor repairs, plus rode along with a service operator one or two days a week to help when it was commercial refrigeration. Which I was learning, but also learned that I was kind of replacing an experienced repairman because they had let too many people go when things first got bad.
About a year later things got worse and he had to kick out the new people and we were gone.
I then began to get unemployment and the need had gotten so great that it must have been the first computerized institutional job boards for that reason. Slim pickings doesn't describe it. But you had to check in every week and apply to whatever you may be qualified for. I had gotten a cheap car (was riding bike to the appliance co) and was selling fruits and vegetables when a job came up at the plant. Not in a lab but out on the large reactor areas working with chemicals and taking readings. The posting had been badly mangled by the typist and it was not obvious it was a chemical job. You could still tell it was technical though. There were over a hundred applicants anyway, and not a realistic chance at all.
Months later I got a lead from my uncle that a lumber company near him needed somebody full time. This was about 35 miles away. All they would do is take my application without getting to talk to anybody, so it took longer to drive there. Still there were about a dozen people applying while I was there so it must have been hundreds of applications overall too.
Now I was already wearing a tie so I went back to the chemical plant and what really made the difference was that there were no new job openings so that time I was the only one showing up in a while. There was only one office building outside the gate, the manager was in and came up to see me but said right away they had no openings. He invited me for a quick tour of the labs and plant anyway, it was good getting inside the gate but like everybody else it was just optimism in the face of declining prosperity.
Surprisingly, he called me back a few days later and offered a part-time job, 4 days a week. He had talked to my professor, and I was a good student. I started out doing a lot of different things for different people, mainly for the analytical lab. In less than a year, they had me come in 5 days a few times when it got heavy and months later I was full-time.
I still wasn't getting twice the minimum wage, but I was so lucky.
After that I only sold produce on the weekends, and only seasonal things I picked myself like avocados and blueberries.
I postponed all of my CPG and miscellaneous purchases (think AA batteries, socks, winter pants, skin lotion, body wash, etc.) until Black Friday "sales". I also stocked up on stuff like Ramen. I did NOT buy anything special for myself (e.g., I really wanted Switch 2, but I think it's too overpriced and decided not to pull the trigger).
I'd not be surprised if a good number of people did the same. PLUS, the prices rose by quite a bit between the start of the year and now. So we need to see if this increase is sales match up to inflation (which, unfortunately, would be more difficult to rely on knowing that that metric has become politicized.)
Last report I saw said US population was set to drop this year - first time in 250 years. With our demographic boomer bubble, continually dropping fertility, and anti-immigration stance, the trend is likely to continue.
Doesn't black Friday kind of suck now and for the last few years? There's sales all of the time, and there's all those open secrets about black Friday skus now.
I found BF week was "ok" ... found a few genuine bargains ... but Cyber Monday really sucked ... I saw absolutely nothing new in terms of wow prices ... n=1
Consumers in the top 10% of the income distribution accounted for 49.2% of total spending, per Bloomberg. If anything, in my opinion, this strengthens the k-shaped economic growth stat that the article mentions.
can also look at it as an opportunity to gather friends and start a small drywall company. Those are in demand, for example. The rich are building more buildings than ever. If you live in the bay area, you can very well see 300k / year if you keep yourself busy.
No, it is not normal for 10% of the coountry to power half the spending. Just think about that statistic for a second. Spending includes groceries, services, and other continual needs. A few private jets can't outspend millions of people buying food.
>No, it is not normal for 10% of the coountry to power half the spending.
Yet, if you look at your chart, it was 40% in 1989s and have been slowly edging up. While 40% is a smaller number than 50%, you can make the same argument about 40% not being "normal", yet society has been chugging along just fine.
K shaped economy with increasing expenditure means the wealthier increase their spending as a portion of the economy and at an absolute level. It is not interpreted as the polity doing well - if anything, it is cause for concern.
The retired middle class boomers I know are completely outside the business cycle.
While I don't think they have enough to really be considered wealthy, they have no mortgage payment, a social security check, a pension and most have a 401k.
The business cycle will not change their spending one bit.
It may, a bit. If the 401k is in the stock market, and the stock market is down, their total visible money is down. That tends to decrease enthusiasm for spending.
It may also affect it a lot. Retirees I know have a retirement plan that involves their retirement accounts being at a specific level at the end of each year. If their accounts are over that level because the stock market had a good year, they consider it funny money that they're allowed to spend.
While there isn't a definitive inflation-adjusted per-capita number for 2025, recent data indicates that overall sales growth was outpaced by inflation, meaning consumers likely bought fewer items. Total Black Friday spending was up, but the average number of items purchased declined. For instance, Salesforce reported total spending was up 3% but order volume was down 2%, with average selling prices climbing 7%.
...
Per-capita sales: The increase in spending is largely driven by higher prices, meaning the actual volume of goods purchased per person likely decreased compared to the previous year, even with higher total spending, says The New York Times.
I think it is more that a greater number of products were heavily marketed by a greater number of companies. My social feeds were flooded with single-product companies and online-only companies aggressively selling all kinds of gear and gadgets. Travel pillows (like 5 different brands), ski socks, luggage, exercise equipment, etc etc. Not gonna lie, I bought some stuff I likely would not have otherwise!
the country is growing so it will commonly "set records". We need to look at it in the context of previous years. Before I went and checked the stats I expected to see instore shopping to be down since americans are poorer than previous years and online shopping to be up since demand is growing and online caters to a worldwide audience.
Checking the stats online growth is up and on par with previous years creating that record breaking stat. Instore numbers arent out yet but some figures are claiming less foot traffic in stores compared with previous years. So i'd say to early to really call if spending was down(compared with expectations)
Black Friday has become Cyber Monday as well. Everyone has a phone, nobody is waiting to log on to their PC at work to do some online shopping.
The holiday season on the whole is a much better indicator, not just one single day. And even then, spending needs to be checked against debt incurred.
1. I saw the same headline - the article stated that there were record SEASON sales, not Black Friday sales. The headline did not match the content of the article.
2. Record revenue, not necessarily record units sold. To be expected with inflation.
3. Savvy online shoppers may be bundling purchases to reduce shipping costs. Waiting for a seasonal sale to buy holiday gifts as well as detergent, snacks and underwear may be quite prudent.
Finally, increased sales revenue does not necessarily equate to more jobs. It can, but by no means does it have to.
Not necessarily. Average income can be up substantially at the same time that median income remains flat or even declines. This means that it is possible for spending by wealthier Americans to make up for sales lost from the unemployed middle class and poor.
(1) People wait for when they perceive they'll get the best deals to do their shopping.
(2) K-shaped economy (data is already bearing this out btw): Spending from the wealthy is driving consumption figures vs. the bulk of the population
(3) Anxiety about rising prices cause people to purchase now vs. later. See for example RAM prices.
Others have pointed out the brackets really buying, but I'd also argue that people deferring their purchases to a period of sales is generally not a good thing.
I don't know where you're seeing "record numbers". 2024 wasn't a great year and you can argue spending was flat from that after inflation. I think the more relevant factor is "who" is spending the money in such a k-shaped economy. .
One of the truly great things about American toxic individualism is that it need not be constrained by rationality; American capitalism finds ways around that. Need to Christmas shop for everyone in your family but don't have enough actual income? Simply go into massive credit card debt! You're probably pre-approved for several cards already; check for our flyer!
Not sure if it's been missed or I'm an anomaly. But as a senior level software engineer who graduated in the 10s, with a wealth of experience, I too (like the juniors who get reported on) am struggling to get a new job. Either I'm just not as good as I think I am, or the barrier is ridiculously high for the next type of job I'm trying to achieve (high paying, product focused developer).
The investment thesis in AI is that the decline in consumer spending in the other sectors of the economy won't matter when the consumers cease to be a significant participant in the economy in the near term: that moving investment away from the activity in agriculture, transportation, goods and services, etc., is rational because those sectors are soon to be obsolete when their customers buying power and long term capacity to produce buying power is sucked away.
Think of the promise of AGI as a promise of billions of tireless immigrants with PhDs who outcompete the other ethnicities in the labor market. It's the same reason people stopped investing in Detroit-based things years ahead of the industry pullout.
I’m not sure I follow. So, are you saying that wealth will become completely concentrated at the top and the rest of us are obsolete, out of work and broke?
That seems unlikely. What is the point of an economy if there is no one who is actually able to consume?
It’s more likely than you think. In fact, this was true for almost the entirety of human history. The last 100 years, where the common person is NOT in destitute poverty, is the exception to the rule.
There will not be no one who is able to consume. The investment thesis is that the investment classes' servant robot armies will be doing trillions of USD of consumption, mostly in metals, munitions, chips, etc.
I don't agree with the thesis, but that is what the thesis is.
No, we need entertainment, potato chips, some drugs and the mandated degree of access to contraceptives. I'm sure OpenAI can calculate the optimal levels of each.
And the current reaction is to make entertainment and potato chips more expensive, and to ban contraceptives and drugs.
The only saving grace of this administration's cruelty is its stupidity. It wants to rule like Rome over slaves, but didn't learn how the rulers kept the populace from uprising and rebelling.
Yes, the time-honored strategy of keeping the poi holloi fed and entertained just enough to prevent riot, but not anymore.
Long-term, it usually fails because the elites become too greedy and too complacent because they haven't seen what a large scale riot looks like, and try to squeeze too much. Then things blow up somewhere and there's a mad scramble to prevent it elsewhere by making concessions (witness all the improvements in labor rights in the West after the Russian revolution).
The point of an economy is to put a stupid flag on mars. Or to melt the ice caps so that Russia has access to ports that aren't clogged with ice. Or to get revenge and throw lavish parties. Or any of a million other arbitrary goals dreamed up by those few who get to steer this thing.
For most of us its just gas or breaks, but those at the top have non economic goals. The economic indicators are looking positive because progress is being made towards those goals, but the gloom persists because most of us don't want the outcomes that were progressing towards.
We're in a car that we can't steer, and the economist article says everything is fine because look how high the number on the speedometer is.
more importantly, good luck to any country that has to deal with an environment full of huge swathes of people festering with the anger and nihilism that comes from going from something to nothing...not for me
The author must have written the headline as a legitimate question to the audience because they certainly did not make much effort to answer it in the article.
I see hardest job market ever. Since 2023 I had ~dozen interviews and 0% up to offer pass rate (half fully passed interviews, with no offer at the end due to variety of cases like money change of mind, other candidates won, ghosting,..)! Up to recent couple years I had over 90% interview passing rate, even in dot com and 2010 (when I had 6 companies interview with 6 offers). I am 55y with rich experience vertically (from low level to high level) and horizontally (multimedia, high tech, many platforms and OS's, major programming languages and few good to pass hard leetcode like interviews). I am better than ever with my skills. (btw leetcode is "disease" and counterproductive the way it is used, I have to say that as that might be part of deeper explanation and I pass it majority of the times, although had few "walk on water" type that maybe only "Jesus of coding" could pass or maybe even he could not)
I haven't been around for much (27 y.o. with 4 y.o.e.) but I've applied for probably 500 jobs in the past 6 months, and had maybe 4 interviews out of it. It's tough out here.
That signifies that your company is not appealing to impressive candidates for some reason or another. Companies that offer good pay, some other great benefits in the place of good pay, or kind of okay pay but very interesting work have no trouble getting people, especially in today's market.
No. Impressive candidates are applying to jobs that pay somewhat reasonably, even if it's below what they expect. If candidates who are desperate are still completely skipping over a company, that says something about that company.
I am also hiring, in Europe with very good work/life balance but modest salaries and like the parent I'm also not that impressed with candidates, so to me the other explanation is that candidates have a wildly incorrect estimation of what is a somewhat reasonable pay in 2025.
The position with FAANG like salaries have reduced drastically. Companies paying 6 figures just to have the privilege to have an entry level developer with this then seen as magical skill of being able to type code was a dream that is over. Look at salaries of engineers in other industries, breaking 6 figures needs a lot of seniority, $150k is rarely heard of for ICs.
I don't know what the market is like in the EU. I can just tell you North America is really bad with a deluge of talent. And sadly, many can't really live off of an EU salary.
breaking six figures in California isn't that impressive unless you are literally single and out of college. But that quickly gets eaten up when rent is 2k+/month and you have school loans to pay off. When you're not paying nearly six figures for college and have your taxes built into most of your day to day life, you don't need six figures.
I understand things are different there, but I thought even in California 6 figures at entry or mid level was a thing only in software engineering, so my point was that premium over other professions was evaporating.
We pay well. Very well in fact. We’re a small company though.
I have a harder time hiring here than at my previous position with a much larger company, even though my current employer is superior to my old one in every way except for brand recognition.
And from others in this space (who have at times tried to recruit me) this is not a problem unique to my company.
What's your area, what qualities are you looking for, and what's your filtering process?
If you're not in a major hub and ATS is filtering out all the good candidates not gaming the system, the results are inevitable. If you're looking for a senior for junior or less pay... Well, it's easier to keep searching than take a job that literally can't pay rent in some high COL areas.
We’re hiring software engineers, full stack (frontend leaning). Email me at gyani at tabtabtab dot ai if you are in London and looking for onsite roles.
It’s interesting bc I still see mid level (7 yoe) developers getting jobs with no issues. Lots of dispersion of difficulty depending on speciality as well
Seems like those are the only hubs kind of hiring. The few recruiter messages I get these day seem to be from there (despite saying I'm not inerested in re-locating).
And even those are way down. Los Angles simply seems dead from my experience the last 2 years.
You don’t know until unemployment and GDP numbers are released. Generally when the fed starts making successive rate cuts, the economy is doing poorly. Since 1953 10 out of 11 recessions happened when republicans held power. So maybe that is also why I think we have a little way to go before things get better. I’m not sure why that is and I don’t want to start a political debate. Things will get better. They always do.
>I’m not sure why that is and I don’t want to start a political debate
I'm late to the party and am willing. It's becsuse we cut taxes a lot during GOP terms but no one has the balls to raise taxes back up. Thars pretty much the one bit of respect I have for HW Bush despite it being the nail in the coffin for re-election. But for the most part, GOP appeals to business, and the easiest talking point is to make them pay less taxes (though this line has blurred since Citizen's United).
That's really the gist of it. Politicians (on both sides of the aisle) need to know when to raise taxes in good times and not coast on the benefits. That way tax cuts can happen as relief in harder times. Instead we're headed to hard times and nearing default levels in the US debt. In other words: we're cooked.
Things do tend to get better, but the time scale can vary. It's hard to tell whether we're deep into a recession, or we're just starting to walk into a depression. You never really know which it is in the first year.
Recession are a natural part of the business cycle though. Like it's good to have them, Democrats not allowing a recession to occur just makes the next bubble even bigger. And all kinds of inefficient businesses are allow to zombify when the resources could be used elsewhere.
Now, the bigger problem is that you're supposed to raise taxes during the boom so that you can run deficits during the recession to recover quickly. Unfortunately we run deficits during the boom so that the crash is even bigger as well ...
Just because recessions do happen, does not mean that its good to have recessions, not does it make them necessary. Popping bubbles can be contained and not blow up the entire system if we have proper regulations, for instance.
> Democrats not allowing a recession to occur just makes the next bubble even bigger. And all kinds of inefficient businesses are allow to zombify when the resources could be used elsewhere.
This is honestly just horseshit. Both parties want to avoid recession, its just that one of them believes in established economic theories and is successful; while the other one is steeped in crackpot economics which have failed repeatedly.
> Popping bubbles can be contained and not blow up the entire system if we have proper regulations, for instance.
Perhaps we have a different definition of recessions but to me you cannot pop a bubble without a recession. How does the bubble deflate without a decrease in nominal GDP? The recession doesn't need have effects lingering for years/decades but one needs to occur.
> Both parties want to avoid recession
I mean in name only. Republicans pretty consistently just cut taxes while shifting government spending from poor to wealthy which really just causes a recession since the marginal propensity to spend of the wealthy is lower (hence ballooning SNP500 while weaker retail spending; wealthy's savings goes into SNP500 while non-wealthy cut back on consumption).
> its just that one of them believes in established economic theories and is successful
Which economic theory do the Democrats believe in? Any real theory has upsides and downsides and I just never either of the two major parties acknowledge or implement the downside (which is always required for the upside).
Large social nets are about redistributing wealth so everybody is (within a _very_ large range) equal but Democrats don't actually do this; they just give money to the bottom individuals without taking from the top which just means the future poor generations have less as they have to repay with interest to the original wealthy generations (and inheritors).
it isn't, but the post-covid inflation and subsequent rates increase has caused something like a recession, just not everywhere at once - so you see sectors busting and coming back, but overall kinda-sorta chugging along economy.
now what happens if the rates won't go down much from here might just be everything slowing down all at once and then they'll drop the rates to 0 again, so it'll get better... two years later.
My experience is companies are hiring CS grads for helpdesk, and maybe eventually promoting them to what they went to school for.
I'm a self-taught senior. At my current company have only ever been a developer, but everyone I work with started as help desk and got moved to development later. I know this is anecdotal, but they all have CS degrees. I think people still underestimate the glut in inexperienced CS grads we're working through rn.
I learned recently our company has an informal policy to discourage hiring fresh grads, which would explain why I haven't seen any hires at the bottom of our grading scale. I'm one step above (though arguably I could be two up by experience, I misplayed my negotiations), but I kinda feel like I'm dangling off the edge.
You have it backwards. Layoffs these days increase stock value because everyone is hedging that bad job numbers will force the feds to lower interest rates. Something Powell has hesitated to do in order to keep inflation in check.
It's a very screwed up incentive to be rewarded for breaking the system, but that's 2025 in a nutshell.
If you have some source to make the case that layoff-stock price change is correlated for a different reason these days, it would be interesting to read it. But I doubt anything has changed
>If you have some source to make the case that layoff-stock price change is correlated for a different reason these days, it would be interesting to read it.
The phenomenon is pretty recent so there won't truly be any studies on it in a while. But look up "Jobless Boom". Here's a piece of what I'm talking about:
>For much of 2025, the job market was described by economists as "no hire, no fire," meaning an environment where workers could count on job security even as hiring around the U.S. cooled. But conditions have changed, and the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate in both September and October, citing increasing risks to employment growth and with Fed Chair Jerome Powell noting that policymakers are closely watching layoff announcements by big employers.
personally, I think the AI efficiencies are a smokescreen, but the point of how this job contraction is forcing he fed's hands is hard to ignore after some 2 years of holding rates steady.
no, but the purchasing power of americans is already lowering due to the taxes on imports introduced by donald trump, by chocking supply the demand has to be filled by fewer local american companies or the extra artifical cost will have to be passed onto american workers, the deportation of illegal immigrants will increase wages due to the decreased supply of workers, which could offset it.
Its a little strange for the article to not mention how much of the "stock growth" and GDP growth is mostly due to unsustainable, large investments in Data centers. Its not clear if that will continue into 2026, and what will happen when it stops.
My personal prediction is that, barring some kind of insurrection/revolution, Congress will flip in 2026 and force POTUS to back down on tariff nonsense, which will finally un-paralyze businesses which will resume capital investments and hiring. 2026 itself might be really rough though, if the AI bubble pops.
The gaming is the problem. I don't trust this admin to fix the loopholes.
That said, I have no clue why anyone in the US is struggling to find nurses unless they expect RN's to be paid minimum wage or be caged down to fractional work. That just doesn't fly.
Not everyone wants to relocate to rural hospital areas (where they're often most in demand as a fraction of the total workers). The wages are often tied to what insurance (and medicare) can reimburse and that rate isn't necessarily going up fast enough to properly staff hospitals.
Bigger ones in the cities with more expensive procedures can afford it better. The smaller hospitals an hour or two drive away from a city are the ones that are hurting the most.
> Frederick Health Hospital in rural Frederick County, Maryland, is ground zero for the hurdles the new fee has created. The hospital is the only emergency room in a county that’s approximately 650 square miles in size. Patients would have to drive as far as 50 miles to get to another facility.
> “We see about 70,000 to 80,000 emergency department visits — one of the busiest emergency departments in the state,” said Jamie White, chief nursing officer at Frederick Health.
> Not only is her hospital one of the busiest in the state, it’s also chronically short-staffed. White said it can’t compete with salaries at hospitals in urban areas or with jobs that allow for more work-life-balance.
Wage suppression? Maybe. But it's not "raise wages" that is an option - its "close the hospital".
The position of "Can we just cancel this program please?" I take to mean all of the H-1B visas. This is a position that I've often seen echoed by people who haven't considered the other positions that use this program and instead see it dominated by technology.
... And it is dominated by technology. And you can see that in the charts and tables of "Top H-1B employers by visa approval" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Top_H-1B_employers_b... and how it changed from 2006 to 2017. Everyone I know who is on a H-1B or H-4 visa is affiliated with a technology job.
There's also a loophole that if one's spouse is approved under a H-1B visa and they're under an H-4 visa, they can also work in a H-1B visa field.
Work Authorization
H-1B holder: Allowed to work for sponsoring employer
H-4 dependents: Eligible if H-1B spouse has approved I-140 immigrant petition or H-1B status beyond 6 years under AC21
This also brings up another option. Let's create a new classification of the H visa. Let's call it the H-1T visa. They've done this before - the H-1C visa ( https://www.uscis.gov/archive/h-1c-registered-nurse-working-... ) used to be the one that nurses could get approved under from 1999 to 2009.
So, spitballing the idea... the H-1T visa would be for all STEM positions. This does not extend to a spouse (the spouse would need their own approval). This visa would be for all professions classified as 15-xxxx, 17-xxxx, and 19-xxxx by the BLS ( https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes_stru.htm ). That is, if your job is 15-1234 and you are a foreign worker, you must have an H-1T (or O-1) visa. The H-1T visa would have a different cap that is independent from the H-1B visa lottery and instead of a lottery it is done by auction. There is a 10% of salary fee paid with a minimum of $10,000 that is to be paid into the SMART scholarship and S-STEM programs. Applicants under this program may not be paid less than the median wage as determined for that profession ( https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes151251.htm ) regardless of skill level for the location where the employee is based. Companies with more than 10% H-1T visa employees may not apply for new H-1T visas if their employees are not compensated for 2000 hours of work or PTO a year (prorated for hire and termination dates - no more than 50 hours a week may be counted for an employee). Positions to be filled by a H-1T visa must first be advertised and open for 30 days on usajobs.gov (expanding the scope of the site) before applications from foreign nationals or other H-1T visa holders may apply to it. Random audits may be done for any position listed and filled by a H-1T visa holder to ensure that the position matches the job listing (with punitive fines per infraction).
---
My goal with those spitballs is do decouple the H-1T and H-1B visas which largely work outside of tech. It clearly establishes who can work in that field. It tries to close loopholes (though I'm sure that there are some in there that I've missed) and tries to make sure that consultancies aren't trying to make a deep bench of people they pay part time or not at all. It's attempting to make sure that people are being compensated at market rates based on real data rather than more nebulous titles.
Could you elaborate on how wages of native French speaking language teachers are being suppressed? Or that nurses in North Dakota are not getting jobs because the hospital is going through the process of hiring a qualified nurse under the H-1B program?
I'm not saying that the teachers or nurses are not underpaid - they should be paid more, but the ability for the organization to pay them more is often constrained by other factors (teacher salaries for public schools, medicare reimbursement rates for hospitals).
Saying "no, we shouldn't hire them" doesn't mean that a qualified American teacher will show up or new nurses will go to Fargo to get a job. Rather, foreign language programs in schools will be discontinued and hospitals in rural areas will close (being unable to meet the required nurse to patient ratios).
There are problems with the system. People on HN often forget that there are a lot of other professions outside of technology that make use of the H-1B when there is a genuine need.
Unfortunately technology - and especially technology consultancies - have flooded the application process for the H-1B visas to the point where H-1B has become synonymous with Indian programmer working at a WITCH company.
> Public Law 114–113, part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, imposed a fee of $4,000 on H-1B petitions [edit: for H-1B dependent employers] and $4,500 on L-1A and L-1B petitions. The additional H-1B fees would apply to all petitions postmarked on or after December 18, 2015, and until September 30, 2025.
This apparently has expired. The proclamation "Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers" is of dubious footing.
You know what would have been good with the budget bill (the previous Consolidated Appropriations Act was a budget bill signed by Obama)? Quadrupling the application fee for H-1B dependent employers and hiring auditors to make sure that the applicants are properly qualified, that there is a position open (not just a position on the bench at a consultancy) for the applicant to fill, that the position to be filled was attempted to be filled by a and that the employer is making full use of their existing employees (e.g. no one on the bench).
This is something that is (was) there and can be regulated and audited and catch the problematic employers - not French teachers and nurses.
If they bring in tons of new French language teachers and nurses, that suppresses the wages of people here. Those companies would have to raise wages to find workers, and if there aren't any workers, they'd have to raise wages to fight for what few workers there are, which might help some of our OWN UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE find LUCRATIVE WORK as they see they can become a nurse or language teacher and make a healthy living doing so.
The only people who need immigrants are greedy businesses. It makes life worse for literally everyone else in a nation.
The more than 400,000 tech workers who have been laid off since 2022 are a clear reflection of wage suppression in the industry, as many of them have spent extended periods without a paycheck.
> The more than 400,000 tech workers who have been laid off since 2022 are a clear reflection of wage suppression in the industry,
IMO, they are a clearer reflection of the fact that the industry has lots of jobs that are tied to remote future payoff and dependent on financing outside of operations, and that tighter money policies reduced the flow of investment into the broad industry (outside of the AI segment), cutting a lot of those jobs.
Again, you are focusing on tech workers. Not everyone on a H-1B visa is a tech worker.
There is a problem with tech and how oversubscribed the H-1B visa is because of tech contracting - especially with visa dependent employers. However, the suggestion to cancel the program would impact many other professions (that already suffer because of tech in the field) where the visa isn't used in the same way.
The problems that we are seeing is not one of the H-1B visa, but rather large amounts of money sloshing around in the tech industry trying to get things done first and consultancies trying to get a piece of the pie from people who have ideas but no idea of how to do do whatever the hyped thing is today.
I'm not seeing how this article is clickbait of any kind. Betteridge's Law really only works for articles that manufacture a provocative question out of nowhere to attract readership, and then have to sheepishly back down in the article body because obviously it's not true. But this article is formulated as a question because it has genuine speculation about the future that nobody is quite sure about. It has points for both sides of the argument. There's no Yes/No answer here. How else would you format the title of such an article?
The author admits that the answer to his own question is no. Which, again, affirms Betteridge’s Law.
> A more plausible explanation for the present weak patch, and for companies’ reluctance to hire, is Trumpian uncertainty. That is now beginning to ease. The chaos of Mr Trump’s tariff roll-out seems to be receding. Deportations and changes to visa rules will remain disruptive, but businesses are starting to adapt. Although 2026 is unlikely to be a year of calm and clarity for America, it may well be a bit less frenzied. That would boost the labour market. American workers’ decade-long hot streak may have longer to run.
To paraphrase his conclusion: no. Things are soft, but in general, probably fine for 2026.
This is what I am saying - I’m sick of seeing sensational, clickbait, disaster-porn headlines, especially when the author timidly backs off and plays both sides once they have your attention. It’s such a lack of journalistic integrity.
996 - it's a global marketplace of talent and very few in America are willing to work 996. If you are, you either are the founder type or young and unshackled.
This is my experience as well. For a lot of these people, it's performative. Just kind of existing at work for 12 hours is "getting work done" to them, despite the fact it's life destroying for pretty much everyone that has an actual life to live.
Labor laws in California make infeasible (for good reason). The kinds of jobs going into 996 won't pay enough for exempt status, so that's 32 hours of overtime a week.
Well as a single datum:
After I got laid off in late 2023 I had a devil of a time finding work (despite having AI experience) to the point my unemployment ran out -
And I was 20 years as a dev and tech lead and full stack, (never had trouble finding work) including stints as a leading EM and CTO, I’ve been an industry award winning innovation lead,a digital studio director, switching tech stacks and cloud certs all my career..mentoring juniors and doing podcasts and writing white papers etc, but peanuts - nothing
Getting ghosted by 25 year olds in interviews and doing rounds and rounds and leetcode and all that but no success- for example I had a 7 round interview with NBCUniversal in 2023 and then got ghosted (I probably doged a bullet since they had subsequent layoffs)
a 12 month stint with nothing - we lost our savings as my wife got laid off too
Since then I pivoted to AI and Gen AI startups- joining incubators and finally got some work or at least cofounded some AI startups- now money is tight and I dont have health insurance but at least I have a job… it sucks as a over 45 year old as I have so much experience but no one cares.. still dont have much grey hair so I can pass for 40 to get noticed
No one stable is hiring or your resume just goes to a dead letter queue or is lost in ether or lost amid all the ai generated resumes out there - young ML and PHds and people under 40 seem to be getting work in Gen AI but thats about it
networking is the only game left and most good recruiters I know got laid off too
At least I’ve built up production experience in agents and context engineering RL, pytorch, langchain/LangGraph, RAG, KGa, etc python, BAML, LLM and LLMops to add to my years of full stack work
The number of just straight out NO's I've gotten has been surprising and disheartening. I've been a developer for 20 years and genuinely don't think I've gotten an outright "no" before this year. Usually just no response. I've gotten maybe eight or nine actual rejections this year. It's honestly worse, emotionally.
Ideally I want a job outside my wheelhouse to learn and move forward, but it seems like no one these days is interested in any sort of training.
There have been two gigs I was really excited about that seemed more-or-less exactly what I have spent the past decade doing and they've BOTH actually replied that they didn't think my skills were a good fit. I genuinely have zero idea what you're looking for if the literal perfect fit isn't it.
Before COVID I would regularly apply for jobs, almost always get them, and decline largely to keep my interview skills fresh.
This last year of looking has been the total opposite. I've applied for umpteen places, and gotten a little bit of email back and forth, and a single interview (it's in a couple days, wish me luck).
> I genuinely have zero idea what you're looking for if the literal perfect fit isn't it.
The simple answer is that they probably had no intention of hiring you, or anybody, in the first place.
The amount of fake job listings is absurd.
Why do they bother wasting time on interviewing the person though? Or does it never get that far?
Companies can have legal requirements to post the job, but have no intention of hiring a random outsider.
Idk about interviewing, but there are many benefits to opening fake job listing (gathering a database of people, keeping track of people looking for jobs, etc) which is why people do it. Data is valuable.
It costs nothing to simulate activity, the costs are incurred on the candidate.
Besides legal requirements, job hiring is a growth metric.
All of silicon valley is playing a stupid bubble game.
Pipelining, mostly.
It is one trick that allows management to lie to everyone, and to implement downsizing. Fact is that A LOT of US businesses became unsustainable due to the tariffs (which Trump totally did for "US first" and not, I repeat NOT to get an extra tax started for him to spend), the retaliatory tariffs, followed by Trump doing the largest mass-firing in US history, presumably because this is listed in introductory economics textbooks in the chapter "what caused the great depression".
So a LOT of businesses are now in the position that they have to raise prices significantly into the worst market in decades. So they'll get significantly less revenue and they'll have to go into overdrive on saving money. That means no hiring, layoffs, price hikes, shrinkflation, ... the whole thing. They have to do a lot less with a lot less.
How does management respond to this? Well, management generally isn't competent. Their only job is to negotiate, and now that will really be put to the test. The smarter ones know that negotiation doesn't even matter under these circumstances (since it's a fixed pie being divided: someone has to lose). So they're maximizing their runway and getting out. And first, of course, they lie. They tell people even inside companies that they're hiring, even to the point of having interviews. They post job postings, because that's part of doing covert layoffs: they replace full time employees by temporary ones, even interns. They wait with price hikes until they're through inventory. They notice they've signed long-term contracts with Walmart that they cannot fulfill. And so on. So they lie to maintain their reputation for after the crisis (so on their next interview they can believably claim "I could have saved the company, but I found a better opportunity ...").
So I bet we'll be seeing a LOT of managers, especially higher up, suddenly decide they need to find a new job, and when it turns out that doesn't work, take a 2-3 year excuse to take a break.
As for replacing these people with AI: they're not spending ... and AI is expensive. Sure there's startups using AI, but larger companies are just firing people and not replacing them. Certainly they don't see the current period as a good time to change ... anything.
Governments should be "countering the crisis" and hire, according to economics textbooks, and increase social spending with the savings from the decade past ... except ... there are no savings from the decade past. So governments are firing, laying off, saving on healthcare, and so on and so forth. The US obviously has everyone's attention but the UK is doing the same (frankly, worse) and so is the EU.
Trump will be the most desperate manager of all, doing anything and everything he can to delay this from happening until the midterm elections in November, like lowering interest rates. But the thing everyone needs to remember about interest rates: they only lower for a good reason. The problem for Trump is ... either he delays this to beyond November or he becomes a "lame-duck" president, unable to do anything.
Two things: (1) Trump doesn't control the prime lending rate (and that's not the interest rate, either); and, (2) he's rapidly headed to lame duck status, already.
Unfortunately "lame duck" status doesn't mean nearly as much under today's radical Republican model of governance.
Namely, where the President does things unconstitutionally and illegally, like creating new taxes on Americans, refusing to execute laws saying money must be spent achieving a goal, ordering the persecution of opponents, etc.
Meanwhile, the new conservative majority of the Supreme Court refuses to act claiming impeachment is literally the only remedy, and a small minority of Republican legislators prevent impeachment from occurring.
We really need a regulation on job openings being real. Each interview costs the candidate roughly one PTO day.
Mandating something like a minimum of 40:1 interviews to extended offers should correct for at least the worst offenses.
Then I'm not posting job openings at all, and I'm working my personal network extra hard to get a pipeline of actual candidates setup.
And it's not just the ATS doing this -- oooodles of goobers who are nowhere near qualified are using AI and slamming the hiring pipelines. I'm already leaning on the personal networks because of that, anyway, but Parent Poster's idea just means I push for that explicitly instead of informally.
See also: layoffs.fyi -- the market is just SATURATED with quality talent
> ... And it's not just the ATS doing this -- oooodles of goobers who are nowhere near qualified are using AI and slamming the hiring pipelines. I'm already leaning on the personal networks because of that, ...
Patrick Boyle : AI and the Death of the Career Ladder (Nov 29, 2025) - https://youtu.be/FsfgbTBIP6M?si=KYd8fkX8lrigGVmT&t=610
> In the graduate job market, the "goods" are job applications. When employers are flooded with thousands of AI-generated, indistinguishable cover letters, they lose the ability to identify the high-quality candidates who invested time and effort. The signal is drowned out by noise. Just as buyers in Akerlof's market stopped buying used cars, employers are stopping the open hiring process. They retreat to offline networks and nepotism to find people they feel they can trust. The issue is that if everyone sounds perfect on paper, the only signal left is a personal introduction.
That will never happen. We've got employers making employees sign ridiculous Non-compete, non-disclosure, non-disparagement, agreements. Do you really think this will ever happen? We've collectively decided that corporations are people and people have freedom of speech. We've spent years doing the H1B dance. (I'm not anti-immigration. I'd love to simply give them citizenship. I've met some amazing people on H1Bs. The system is exploitive to US workers AND the H1B recipients). Face it, as someone who is actually doing the work of IT, you lost a long time ago.
California killed the noncompete. Hell, the previous FTC almost killed them.
>I genuinely have zero idea what you're looking for if the literal perfect fit isn't it.
Maybe someone on a visa that can't leave and will take peanuts.
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how the tech world is becoming trumpian-like is a funny thing to witness - try to unionize next time
>try to unionize next time
Amazon had a whole paper about how bringing migrants and diversity makes unionization less likely and successful. It's part of the point.
Also it's not just the US. Here in Europe it's the same. Hell the government spent it's money trough the employers org training Moroccans to become programmers to then bring em in. I knew a fair few programmers who believe this is all just for low skill low paying jobs as if paying better wages for those is impossible and as if those deserve to be undercut. The weird thing is how this kind of plainly rightwing economic rhetoric is often masquerading as left wing.
The only silver lining in this mess is that it does seem like this was finally the push for my industry to start seriously pushing for unions. Of course, corporate won't let it come easy but I only see momentum building now.
Good luck unionizing together with offshore office in Bangalore.
> Ideally I want a job outside my wheelhouse to learn and move forward, but it seems like no one these days is interested in any sort of training.
No one has the resources left to pay for it, that's the thing. Clients are cutting budgets because no one is buying their stuff, so everyone is looking for seniors and above only, and replacing juniors/intermediates with AI.
Trickle-down ideology is now beginning to eat itself, the ouroboros is complete - turns out, eventually the entire economy will crash down on itself when people can't afford things. Even Henry Ford already knew this...
>> No one has the resources left to pay for it
Record profits reported by tech companies says the opposite. Money are there, but no will to spend them on people.
We had multiple layoffs recently so parent company could report a billion USD in quarterly profits.
> Record profits reported by tech companies says the opposite. Money are there, but no will to spend them on people.
And you buy things/services from these major tech companies, but in return they buy nothing from you.
The circular stream that was "supposed to be" capitalism is broken.
We’ve effectively short circuited the corporate profits to stockholder route - ignoring employees rights, benefits or simple human loyalty and decency
Pray that Darth Trump alters it no further
... which was needed because no/less profit can and does send the stonk price tanking. That's also a "there are no resources left to do the right thing" - the stonk market dynamics are a part of what is eating our economies alive.
Have you tried jobs.now ? In theory those are positions legitimately looking to be filled.
they aren't. those are market tests, not open reqs.
How do you reckon? My understanding is that they're valid perm positions that legally must be offered to US citizens before they can be filled by anyone else.
yes technically legal, the best kind of legal.
it's really, really easy to say that applicants don't meet the requirements, since hiring is sooo subjective. "none of the applicants had 8 years and 2 months experience in this company working on this team, so they won't be able to perform the duties".
or, if they do have a flood of qualified applicants (the point of the website), they can simply not go forward with PERM at this time for their selected candidate. PERM roles aren't new jobs in the sense that the employer is "down" one employee if they don't fill it. PERM roles are simply a status change for an existing employee.
Nominally - although perhaps more often barking and not serious - is if you're a super duper qualified US citizen, you either can find a job there, or, you sue the company for discrimination, either way you get paid. The latter being the part that's highly hypothetical and potentially not realistic.
Before COVID I would regularly apply for jobs, almost always get them, and decline largely to keep my interview skills fresh.
Well, wait, isn't this just karma in action, then? Sounds like you deliberately wasted a lot of other peoples' valuable time.
No, because software engineering interviews are a specific skill and you need to be on top of it - eg leetcode, sys design and soft skills and hiring managers are making everything harder
Ie its a race to the bottom - there is no gold standard for a productive software engineer who is transferable to another company that really people trust
I work in a FAANG as a SWE. I'm not the on selecting candidates, but I do interview a lot of them. I'm pretty sure I've never seen a 50+ year old candidate. 99% of the candidates have less than 10 year experience, and are in their 20s or 30s.
So yes, ageism is real. I suppose the company gets away with it by saying they look for candidates with 3-10 years of experience?
At that stage, I think I would pass Leetcode with 2-3 months of practice, and I don't mind putting the work if this is what it takes. I'm just not sure I'd be given the chance.
Yeah forget it if you look old - old people like me might have to put on our glasses
Linus Torovalds is 55 - so he’s too old right? Hes about dad age for most software engineer teams in FAANG and startups…
Software engineering team culture is young and male skewed for years-
Are you in a major tech market (SF? Seattle?)
I was a laid off in the beginning of the year from my remote job, landed several interviews, and I found a new job in <2 months. My resume is less impressive than yours, ~10 years of experience.
I was able to land interviews with some remote companies. I used to work at Shopify, a got some interviews at Ruby shops from that.
Some possibilities:
1. Ageism, this is a distinct possibility.
2. You held very senior positions. I think a lot of people don't like hiring people that were more senior than them. So that CTO is being held as a negative. They are not saying "Hey I get the experience of an EM and a CTO in a Senior Engineer for a bargain salary", they are worried you will overshadow them. This is sub optimal behavior for companies.
3. Talking to people I think non-tech markets look like they are doing fine. People I know in Rochester, Syracuse, and Cleveland aren't having issues getting jobs. I think the huge layoffs in big tech have left a big supply in tech cities to less demand.
> 2. You held very senior positions. I think a lot of people don't like hiring people that were more senior than them. So that CTO is being held as a negative. They are not saying "Hey I get the experience of an EM and a CTO in a Senior Engineer for a bargain salary", they are worried you will overshadow them. This is sub optimal behavior for companies.
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Not only is there the overshadow worry, but there's the overqualified for the position.
You were CTO once, and now you're a IC again... are you looking for a CTO position still?
I had an experience (post dot com crash) where the team hired a senior engineer... who left the team within a year to be an engineering manager somewhere else in the company and our team was back to interviewing for the position again.
From our team's perspective we wasted the time interviewing and onboarding a person when they job-hopped (even within the company) in under a year. Despite being qualified as a senior engineer it wasn't what they wanted to do.
To that end, overly qualified candidates are similarly risky to hire as under qualified ones.
I've also been in situations where someone in a senior or management position is hired with previous Big Tech or startup experience and tries to make the regional retail company's internals into a Big Tech engineering department which ended poorly for everyone involved.
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To your third point, the desire to stay on the coasts and around Big Tech companies is also a thing. Being willing to move to and within the midwestern states (some companies have return to office... others don't want to create a tax nexus in another state - if you don't hire anyone in California or Colorado you don't have to follow those laws... so hire everyone in one state and only deal with one state's payroll tax and insurance options).
> I had an experience (post dot com crash) where the team hired a senior engineer... who left the team within a year to be an engineering manager somewhere else in the company and our team was back to interviewing for the position again.
Same reason I struggled to get a job at McD's or Home Depot years ago when laid off. They knew I'd be gone ASAP and that I probably wouldn't eat shit the way the local rube demographic would. These are crappy service jobs but they still want you to stick it out for at least 6-12 months.
Yes region matters
My career started in the south and then we moved to Seattle - it feels like everyone is laid off in Seattle - I could probably find something in the south again
can't comment on west coast but from perspective in NYC, i think the market for SWEs willing to work in office here is very good. might be different since there's lots of different industries hiring for SWE roles in addition to typical tech "startups" here.
i've noticed that folks who want to work remote having a tougher time if they're looking for tech jobs. makes sense if you look for jobs at a local non-tech company, you might have better luck.
generally seems like remote jobs have the most competition so if you can find jobs localized to your market, you will have more luck there.
So hire me then. I only apply to in-office jobs in NYC and only get an immediate No. No interviews. I'm as qualified as OP.
4. Overqualified can also be seen as you are seeking this job purely temporarily. While continuing to seek better. You may be gone within weeks. A more alert project might seek to use your experience at low cost for that little while. But a harried manager already had a problem and might see it as now having two problems.
Yeah I get that I have all sorts of resumes (tailored to the job I apply for) and I took off the CTO and now am using Sr AI engineer
Still very very hard to get noticed
Being overqualified is indeed a real phenomenom. Employers can think your too expensive, or that your desperatem and that you might not stick around long. All valid concerns.
I don't mean this as a judgement; I am genuinely curious: with a career like that, how are you out of money after twelve months? Do you have unusual expenses? I am 31, currently making $180k (the most I've ever made) as a bog standard 'senior SWE', and I have nearly a million dollars. I am not frugal, I don't think; I just bought a $900 pair of sunglasses last week, and that wasn't a huge outlier expense. I have at least twenty years of savings right now. What is eating up your (and any onlookers', if you care to comment) budget?
It's also possible that OP means short term savings kept for circumstances like these, and long term investments bear more cost (e.g. keeping money in a money market fund vs in stocks has different tax implications when you take the money out).
I bet poor investment planning and low-paying roles despite the years of experience.
> I bet poor investment planning
Or good investment planning. I only recently built up savings after spending my entire career maxing out 401ks. If I was laid off, I'd only have like 6 months or so of savings before I run out despite having a coastFIRE/leanFIRE NW.
Yes, there are hardship withdraws from 401ks, but the older you get, the more retirement account means retirement account. Meaning, it becomes more clear that the money in that account needs to be left alone until things get dire. You're not going to be more employable in 20 years.
A 401k and an IRA together constitute only $31,500 this year, and less in each previous year, before taxes. That shouldn't be the main factor. FWIW I was including those accounts in my 'savings' number.
Getting replaced by H1Bs after a year and then being out of work for six months (because ageism), four times in a row--that'll do it! Especially now since H1Bs replacing you makes you look like a job-hopper so your job search becomes more impossible every time.
Yeah, once you hit 50 the wall is real.
You need to maximise your earnings during your 30s and 40s to be able to just do contracting, etc. then.
Take care of yourself: exercise, skin care, fashion trends, botox, hair dye, etc. so you do not look 50+ and no one will know the difference.
If botox is required to secure an engineering job when you have a long proven track record of solving hard technical problems successfully- the company is a fraud and the jobs are fake.
“Companies” don’t hire people, a few human individuals acting autonomously, with their own beliefs and biases, are ultimately responsible for bringing someone new onboard.
Once you hit 40s just get the botox anyway. Looks better. Only lasts 3 months or so. Good for a few rounds of interviews.
The way hiring works is a reflection of company culture. If they can’t execute a hiring process that hires the most skilled and competent instead of the youngest and best looking, guess what kind of coworkers you will have to deal with?
Anyways, I am in my 40s- I am an amateur strength athlete and eat healthy and already look almost inappropriately healthy and youthful for a sedentary job- enough so that I feel sometimes I’m not taken as seriously because I don’t look like a stereotypical elder nerd.
An ageist company culture does not mean the company is a fraud though or that the jobs are fake. It’s all very real, you are just rejected, that’s what makes it so frustrating, you could be living the good life if only those people weren’t so ageist. Now imagine being a POC and your whole life is like that, just racism everywhere keeping you out.
In both cases- ageism and racism, the employer culture is hiring less qualified workers based on criteria other than skill and competence. That necessarily means they have a lower caliber of expertise on average, as they are artificially decreasing the pool size of potential candidates. Moreover, if they have a discriminatory hiring practice in the first place, it is very unlikely that they are really selecting for competence even within the preferred demographic. For an extreme example, look at the current US administration, hiring only people with "Mar-a-lago face" combined with them needing to have a particular ideology and extreme lack of ethics, necessarily makes virtually all of the hires incompetent. They aren't, presumably specifically seeking incompetent hires, it's just the only people left given the fact that they select for things other than competence first.
I hire software engineers, and given all of the discrimination in the field, my willingness to hire women, minorities, and older people gives me a substantial advantage over those I am competing against that have discriminatory hiring practices. Although I'm not selecting for discriminated against groups, in practice I hire almost exclusively from them, because there are a surplus of extremely qualified people in those demographics that are getting rejected from everywhere else. I'm sure there are a ton of competent young white men in software engineering, but they're never among my top applicants, presumably because they've already been hired elsewhere.
This widespread discrimination pre-loads the applicant pool, such that the effect is enormous: you are getting substantially inferior employees if you have discriminatory hiring practices, because so many others do to, so your "preferred demographic" is already depleted of competent applicants.
Hiring and Retention are two very different experiences.
Possibly besides the point but I wouldn't consider botox "taking care of yourself", taking care of yourself is staying in shape, eating healthy, and maybe dressing well and practicing good hygiene.
Can we just pause and consider what happened to this industry where this is the advice.
This is the natural consequence of marketing and fundraising completely destroying engineering. It's not about real things anymore. It's about image. It's an industry of carnival barkers turning everything it touches to shit.
This is America, the land of grifters and carnival barkers. Everything is about marketing and image. Always has been.
The industry had turned to shit long ago when we deviated from the path of the UNIX philosophy and fell into cargo cult frontend programming. We had the most powerful UI in the world, the command line, and we gave it up for pretty pixels and shiny buttons. We have lost what it truly meant to be an engineer, now just look at the kinds of people entering the industry today: No passion for the science, just chasing cash and quick thrills. And you wonder why our interview process has gotten so shallow?
"Now it's different". Is it really? One aspect of these stories is that we all do age and we do climb into higher positions. So we run into "too old" and "too qualified" and "will leave asap for something better". And the reason is not that the economy or job market are different. The reason is that we are older. Nothing wrong with both happening at the same time but this "I never ran into this problem before" does have a common difference which is "I was never that old before".
I use "old" for shock value here while being totally in the camp that companies would do well to find ways to use older, more experienced talent at a lower cost than "normal". (Even after I have run into "older" as inflexible and a pain to work with.)
But there is also another problem in many of these reports: Older and still applying by sending resumes in response for job postings! If you are older you should have a network you can use. If they find nothing for you - or don't care to talk to you, then THAT is the better signal. And still not necessarily a signal about the job market.
Not sure what you are on about - I have a giant network in linkedin and it did help me find a job eventually…
You only cultivate a regional network if you live in the same spot for years - i moved from the south to Seattle - Im not moving back to the South- so my network is mostly useless
I have for example a network with OpenAI, Google and Anthropic - all it got me was getting to the team match stage with Google followed by denial after almost 6 months in the interview process
As for OpenAI and Anthropic you need to have success in the AI startup world+network+ be young (old is only allowed id you have massive career success eg VP at Google or Amazon)
Were you flexible with re-location or you were looking just at you current region or it is that bad no matter your flexibility?
Do you have a thesis for why that might be happening? Ageism? Overqualification? The next generation of hiring managers not knowing what to do with you? Past experience being deemed irrelevant to modern SWE problems? Is it all just a bad market? Your profile strikes me as the last one that would struggle with landing a gig.
The simple answer is we are in a recession and no one wants to spend money on new hires right now if they can avoid it.
Uncertain outlooks in general + why hire people if AI soon will solve everything everywhere all at once?
Try taking 10-12 years off of your resume. Especially if you don't have grey hair this might help a lot.
This is what I do. I leave just enough on the resume to look "senior" while not appearing to be older than 30 or so on my resume.
Having a great, timeless linkedin profile picture helps too.
Yeah, this ageism factor mixed with how unstable in general my industry is had me adjusting my long term plan to focus on being able to survive off my own products. I'm still far off from that point but it's probably best to plan my mid-late career before industry locks me out...
Doesn't help that I've tried to specialize for quite a while but simply can't stay around long enough without layoffs happening. Hard to be a domain expert when companies let you go ever 3 years. T shaped generalist it is, then.
What’s admirable is that you’ve actually applied to jobs below your pay grade. Most people won’t because doing that grind in your 40s is actually hard especially if you have kids.
So what these people do if they can't find a job?
It’s rarely good. Are you sure you want to ask that question?
> 7 round interview with NBCUniversal in 2023
Name and shame, this should be the norm. People are too shy on this subject. Thank you.
My brother who is nearly 50 and has worked in tech since the dot com boom, got laid off in January and couldn't find a job until last week. This job, too, was just a contractual position at his old Fortune 50 firm.
He has an engineering degree from one of the top 5 engineering colleges in India, a Master's from one of the top 5 engineering schools in the US. He built some of the systems that form the foundation of the entire call center industry.
And now he pivoted to GenAI and has dozens of very impressive public projects including some heavily starred open source repos
And yet...nothing.
Ageism in the tech industry has never been worse
The dead comment replying to this said "Start your own company," which I hear a lot. The problem is, the #1 thing YC looks for in a founder is they're wealthy enough to absorb risk. You don't take on massive risk from a position of financial insecurity.
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Are you ready for great age of suffering? Because there will be no saving, no UBI, no plan B. This is it. This is the end of careers and beginning of centuries of misery. AI will replace everyone except around 3%. If you aren't one of those 3%, start accepting the reality of infinite pain.
Or you know the 97% can just kill the AI. I’d probably go that route.
You can't kill what's more intelligent than you and ubiquitous. You can the 3% though...
I think there's something quite interesting (well to me anyway) where if you go by the internet, there is this bloodbath (slight exaggeration perhaps but feels like that) in jobs out in the US, UK, Aus and major European countries (the volume of anecdotes & complaints would suggest a significant downturn in employment) but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along. Not great guns but still ok. The interesting thing is how much is internet chatter a leading signal for this thing now than in previous cycles?
Outside of the unique circumstances of covid, we've never had, to my knowledge, a notable downturn when social media, and all the chatter it generates, has been so prominent or mass engaged. How much of it is just internet noise vs canary in the coal mine stuff. Who knows? But curious to find out in coming months/year
Reality is not particularly rosy for new graduates AFAIK. If I lose my job, I wouldn't be super surprised that I might never get a similar job for the rest of my life -- it is not that I do not have the skills, but 1) the amount of time for a laid off SDE to get a new job could reach to years, not months, so I need to do something else to earn $$$, and 2) why are companies going to hire me, who have gap years and are older, but not some fresh graduates who can work 80 hours per week and only demand half of the salary?
And yes I believe this time it's going to be different. I believe that if the economy dumps again, we are really going to see more hot wars. It is different from 2001, and different from 2008. We have kicked the can for almost 20 years and I kudos the policy makers who managed to achieve this.
I have heard that story every few years for the last 30. I know when it is your personal situation things are hard, but your story is nothing new and people recover. Some get back into whatever their degree was, others start a new career and never do. this will happen again.
>and people recover.
So you read nothing about how graduates during 2008 pretty much had forever stunted careers?
They aren't put on the streets, but it's clear some very long term damage is being done to people simply as a matter of bad luck.
> So you read nothing about how graduates during 2008 pretty much had forever stunted careers?
Myself included. Graduated in '08, had to work various minimum wage jobs in retail for several years because no one was hiring. I'm just now at a point in my career, nearing 40, where I should have been at 28.
Degree doesn't matter much when your only work experience is 5 years of working at Starbucks, and you barely have personal projects because you're too busy working 2 jobs to just to survive.
Those of us who suffered through that time period barely recovered, and many didn't recover at all. It shaped an entire generation.
I'm a little older but I have found it strange how well economic crisis has been almost wiped from our collective memories
it was a horrible period and I have many friends who are in the same boat especially those not in software
It’s because the site is chalk full of millennials who jumped on the “I was an office assistant making $40k and I did a bootcamp and now make 200k” at the right place at just the right time.
They’re convinced they’ll time the next grift right. Who knows
I think it is wiped from memories because it very specifically affected one or two years of college graduates (that had the experience the parent comment mentioned). Not an entire generation. The data shows millennials as a whole are better off than boomers were at their age.
> The data shows millennials as a whole are better off than boomers were at their age.
Perhaps true if you go east far enough, seems objectively wrong for the majority of the west though. Honest question, if you think this and it isn't just rage bait.. what data supports it? Scott Galloway disagrees and offers hard data, and goes as far as calling it intergenerational theft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJ4hkpQW8E
> Perhaps true if you go east far enough, seems objectively wrong for the majority of the west though.
Much of the (American) millennials generation believes a story that they’re worse off. I feel it is a convenient story for people to tell themselves and blame someone else for their perceived losses. But I pulled up several articles supporting my claim with a quick search, even though the opposite narrative is more widespread.
Example article about how inflation adjusted net worth is higher for millennials than it was for boomers at the same age:
https://www.newsweek.com/millennials-financially-better-off-...
Galloway isn’t necessarily wrong in the individual data points he raises. But if you look at the sum of all of the factors - higher rents, more student debt, etc but also the positive things - the net worth in the end is higher for millennials. And remember this is inflation adjusted already.
The numbers that interest me are comparing home ownership rates at various ages between the generational groups
Lots of research shows about a 8-10% gap, that only at very specific ages finally achieved parity.
The consequence of this is a difference in wealth building, economic security, and family planning for millions.
To add to that, an unemployed 28 year old living with his parents in the house that they own is a "homeowner" in most of these homeowner stats.
Why does home ownership on its own matter? Net worth is inclusive of housing and assets and debt. And net worth is a direct measure of the wealth that is being built.
Because homes are pretty much the only asset a millenial would have at that time that would have grown over time. a 08-9 graducate wouldn't really have much money to spar for stocks unless they made really lucky bets or happened to mine a fewbitcoin they forgot about.
Most all else would have inflated or depreciated.
401k and IRAs is where millennials should have their stocks and those have done very well over the years. There is little point in stocks elsewhere (unless you are very rich) since stocks are for long term investments and those two cover the retirement needs of nearly everyone (except the very rich), and there are few other savings needs people might have that stocks qualify for.
Remember you won't live forever (at least not to current medical knowledge, you can bet otherwise if you want), and you can't take it with you (according to most religions). Thus once you have retirement covered and emergency savings you should be spending everything you earn. You should have enough money left at the end of the month to afford the things you buy at the end of the month, but there is no point in any more, enjoy life with what you earn. (donating to charity counts as enjoying life!)
Someone posted this already but a more useful "net worth" is how big of a shock can take without paying multiples on the sticker price.
And even homes are now sieving into institutional buyers.
https://medium.com/newco/your-financial-shock-wealth-4845e6d...
Net worth is a funny metric.
Joe has a 300k house with 100k equity and 200k mortgage. He has 100k in stocks in a 401k. Net worth negative 100k.
Pete has $300 in his cheques account, and isn't eligible for loans or mortgage. Net worth positive $300
Obviously Joe is richer than Pete though.
Most people would consider Joe's networth to be $200k.
> Obviously Joe is richer than Pete though.
Yeah, because Joe’s net worth is $200,000 and Pete’s is $300
House equity = current value - mortgage balance
You subtracted the mortgage twice, so your math is off by $200,000.00
Substitute some numbers until the example makes sense, the point is that net worth can be misleading.
Joe is on the hook for his mortgage and so his monthly cashflow must be higher to afford to live. However his net worth is larger and so he is richer.
This is why middle class people often feel poor than those who are poor: they make more money and have more in total, but they also have large bills and if something happens those bills will catch up with them fast.
And that is the interesting part - for a given sudden bill of a certain size, someone more wealthy on paper can have much worse outcomes.
This feels like one of those PEMDAS posts on facebook where everyone comes to different results and argues endlessly about it. So let me add my 2¢:
if you have 100K in equity and owe 200K on your mortgage, then you’re net -100K on your house
that combines with the 100K in the retirement account to produce a net worth of $0
Where is my mistake?
Net worth isn't equity - mortgage + 401k. Net worth is assets - liabilities. Equity is not an asset; the house is. So is the 401k. The mortgage is a liability. So Joe's net worth is 100k (IRA) + 300k (value of house) - 200k (mortgage) = 200k positive net worth.
(Another way of thinking about equity, specifically, is it is the real estate contribution to net worth, because it is what is left when you subtract the real estate liability (mortgage) from the real estate asset (value of house). That's why you shouldn't subtract the mortgage from the equity: equity is what's left after you've already subtracted the mortgage.)
(Edit: Adjusted sign in first equation to subtract mortgage. It's probably more technically accurate to keep it as addition and consider the mortgage to be a negative value, but I believe it's more straightforward and intuitive for most people as it is now represented.)
Joe’s net worth is $200k. Why on earth would you value the home at $0?
Net worth = assets - liabilities
As a thought experiment would you not feel (much) poorer if houses suddenly cost >$5 million tomorrow and you didn't own one yet? Even if everything else cost the same? Even if everything else cost the same and your net worth went up $100k?
I've read this as well, heres an economist article with a graph: https://archive.ph/Y3vvz
However, there are certainly a lot of conflicting studies and data out there. And to be honest, it doesnt feel true given how much young people complain on the internet. Its hard to see which asserion is correct. It isnt necessarily correct just because one study says its so.
People complain. Boomers conplained too back in the day - still do, but about different things.
That's the average. Please compare the median wealth (especially seeing the absurd paper wealth of crypto bro and stock influencers who are almost exclusively millennials).
[Edit] also inflation is calculated based on average consumption. So you will notice that toys, clothing and electronic devices (TVs, cooking robots), all cheaper and cheaper (due to enshitiffication and quality decrease) count more for inflation than education, cars, housing and probably a lot of other stuff a 25-35 yo care more about.
I feel like your edited-in point is glossed over FAR too often. We talk about inflation like it’s some objective measure when it’s arbitrary as f@$k and mostly only reflects what the current arbiters of inflation want it to reflect.
A great recent example was the Australian decision to add capital gains on a primary residence as a profit (ie. negative expense) when calculating inflation. All of a sudden inflation was very reasonable despite the fact that established homeowners and their families were choosing between groceries and mortgage payments… but in terms of their net worth, YAY! They’re getting ahead!
I think the average homeowner age is what, 59 now?
A lot of the data used to claim millenials are doing better off is based on nonsense like "millenials have larger TVs on average" or "millenials all have smart phones yet boomers didn't have mobile phones", or equating 1 person making 3 times the median wage and 2 people making nothing as just as good as 3 different people making median wage.
Class of 2008 here. A couple years ago a 26 year old colleague whined he made only $130,000 a year. At his age I made $17 an hour photographing tennis rackets. My sympathies were limited…
sorry your math seems strange. You graduated from college in ‘08 - 17 years ago. You’re nearing 40. So let’s say you graduated at 23 … you’ve only had a college level job for five years?
The economy has been moving upward since 2013 - 12 years ago. What were you doing from 2013 to 2020?
I ask because I also graduated around ‘08. I’ve been a software developer since 2016. I’m currently a senior dev with almost a decade of experience.
There were really crappy years to start with, but I feel I’ve made up for it substantially.
My own parents graduated in the late 70s during a terrible economic recession.
It seems weathering economic recessions have been a tradition for several generations.
I still remember articles almost identical to the ones I see now; “this generation is screwed and there is no possible salvation.”
It’s getting old.
Yeah man, those stupid hick rednecks in Appalachia should have just learned to code.
My grandparents were stupid redneck hicks from Appalachia who moved the Midwest and became wealthy and well educated.
The current VP is a stupid redneck hick from Appalachia who … you can Google him.
Point is, one way of responding to regional decline (Appalachia was once the wealthiest part of America) is to move.
I know some rednecks from Appalachia who did learn to code. He retired from IBM a few years ago (that is IBM was a different company when he worked there than it is now) to a nice retirement in his little mountain shack.
Though I wouldn't tell the rest what they should do. The guy I know had to live in MN for decades (where I met him) away from the rest of his friends and family - that is itself a large cost in lifestyle that I question if money makes up for.
> I'm just now at a point in my career, nearing 40, where I should have been at 28.
What or who is the standard for where you “should have been at 28?”
Career progression is not everything, I'm approaching 40 and I'm doing the opposite, pivoting towards what I should have been doing at 28.
Here's the study on that:
https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/77/4/78...
>> Across a generation’s life course, early-life advantages are magnified through disparate occupational and social trajectories that lead to wide late-life disparities in financial and health resources, in a process first termed by Crystal and Shea as one of “cumulative advantage and disadvantage” (CAD; Crystal, 1982, 1986, 2020; Crystal et al., 1992, 2017; Crystal & Shea, 1990b; Dannefer, 1987, 1988). Dannefer (1987) described the trend of increasing inequality over the life course as the “Matthew effect,” applying a biblical dictum first used by Merton (1968), stating that “to he who has much, more is given, and to he who has little, even that is taken.” This ongoing process has also been described as an “obdurate tendency” for increasing inequality over the life course (Dannefer, 2020).
I mean, it caused me to emigrate to a growth economy. If I stayed in the West, I don't think I would have been OK.
I was going to say this. Money comes, money goes, that’s life. Ideally you’re smart enough to save and invest to weather these storms but for those (like myself) that are still working hard post 40, we know it’s all part of the game.
I tell the younger generation the same thing. Save, invest, max 401k, before you go off and party. Your older self will thank you.
You telling someone with 50k in debt, turning in 1000's or job apps struggling to find a job they studied 4+ years for and not being able to even pay rent to "just save"... is exactly how we got into this situation to begin with.
I'm literally one of these people. My only work experience is a GSoC internship in 2021. I have yet to get hired and I've been looking for 4 years, graduated in 2022 right before ChatGPT came out. I've had no choice but to become a generalist as a consequence, and over the last year or two my interviews have dropped to zero and absolutely none of the advice I've gotten from anybody has helped. Just my personal experience.
Yeah, I'm really sorry this happened. I'm managing a bit better since I graduated in 2017, but I still pretty much had my senior trajectory yoinked from under me. The market is completely different now than back when I graduated.
I don't really have any advice for the present. We're in a storm, so do what you need to weather it. If there's any downtime you do have, use it to prepare for when (if?) the market bounces back:
1. Network. Nothing serious but just get to know people in your area. Keep in contact and they might one day have an in for some work.
2. work on personal projects. They aren't being looked at now, but it'll help you stand out when the market corrects itself.
3. consider some adjacent skillsets. At some point, if this last longer than any of us expect, it may be best to vouch for yourself. learning some graphic design can help you sell your own apps or make websites for others. Learning some art can help you sell games. embrace the generalization and be able to take small products from start to finih by youself. If you don't want to get completely out, you may want to start shaping your career around being your own boss instead of relying on others to employ you.
4. take care of your physical health. I don't know your body, and you may already be doing this. But it's always important to remind people (especially in a field like tech) that sometimes a breath of fresh air and 10 minutes of walking can make all the difference. Don't let yourself get cooped up.
Best of luck out there.
Thank you for this. Networking is tricky (at least in person networking) because I live in an area that pretty much has no tech hub at all. I call it the state nobody talks about because the only time I've ever heard it mentioned is in elections lol. But I've certainly tried to network and will continue to do so.
I can't do graphic design or UI design more generally but I absolutely love to develop software and work with tech. But I am trying to diversify because I don't know what else to do. As a result my resume puts me as a generalist which doesn't exactly help my chances... But eh. I am definitely trying to work with what I have, it's frustrating and really demotivating though.
Probably not helpful, but as a high school dropout and self-taught developer in the industry since 2012. It seems like new grads are being stuck in a similar situation to what the self taughts had to go through to break into a job. Companies care about your work-related experience and dgaf about your college experience. The advice I have is build and contract. Focus on projects and results. If worse comes to worse just set up an LLC and say you've been employed as a developer there for the last 3+ years.
Hustle culture.
I would echo this as well. When I started, I was still in high school (mid 90s) and the only thing they cared about was “make it work”.
Post college, it was about “what have you done?” vs “where did you go?” and so I demonstrated several projects I had done for the passion. A game engine. A graphics website community. Some novel networking libraries. A MUD. Finally, a database. By the time they got to the mud and database they were ringing me non-stop.
All of these projects done over a weekend or two while working other jobs to afford rent. Call centers are a personal level of hell.
That list should surely had to prepend "pay off debt, live within your means"
Listening to Dave Ramsey on YT gets me amazed on how some people can be so irresponsible and accumulate debt on credit cards and cars they can't afford.
I firmly believe if people in this country were smart with their money in the way Dave Ramsey preaches, the entire service sector would collapse.
> turning in 1000's of job apps struggling to find a job
This is the entire problem. It's called job hunting, not job fishing. I.e. you should be seeking out specific exact positions that you know are worthwhile and tailoring yourself for them, not casting a net and hoping.
There is value in both. Sometimes fishing will find a great job at a place you have never heard of. Often hunters come home at the end of the day having got nothing.
Hunting is still your better bet overall. figure out who has a need and position yourself to fill it. This also takes a lot more time to pull off than just sending 1000 resumes, and there is no guarantee. there is generally a mix of course, you start by casting a net to see what is there, and then when there is a potential bite you start tailoring your resume to that potential. Not all leads will result in something. Who you know is always important.
I'm gonna have to hold your hand when I tell you this: when you tell the younger generation to "save" or "invest" they are going to walk away from that conversation knowing they were just speaking with one of the most mind-numbingly naive Olds they're going to encounter in probably the next several months.
Please, if you ever want any respect from anyone younger than you ever again in your entire life, do not say those words again.
At some point you are going to have to grow up and take matters into your own hands instead of blaming everyone for your situation.
I’m not old. Just wise.
I appreciate the point you're trying to make, and I agree taking responsibility for one's own life circumstances is the only way to improve them, but surely you understand that 'save and invest' is wholly unsuitable advice for someone with no disposable income or no income at all.
Who else is responsible for you?
You have two options. Continue to point fingers and complain and be broke, or start putting $100/mo in VOO and save what little money you have for your future?
I know it sucks. I know income inequality is huge. I know the only way out of this is to put in sweat equity. I know the only way to put food on the table is to have a second job at a gas station. I’ve been there. However, as much as you DON’T want to hear it - the only way out of your mess is by you working your way out of your mess.
As I said, I agree with taking personal responsibility - I'm not sure why you're still trying to fight me on that.
> You have two options. Continue to point fingers and complain and be broke, or start putting $100/mo in VOO and save what little money you have for your future?
The imaginary person you're trying to give this advice to graduated from university eighteen months ago and has been living in their parents' house ever since, applying for jobs non-stop. Their income is $0 per month. They are entirely unable to apply your advice; applying your advice is something they aspire to.
If my child was living with me for 18 months post graduation, they would have any job that pays > $0. I don't care if it's McDonalds, but they would be working.
Yup. At 17 I worked temp agencies, factory floors, making bricks, plastic injection molding, data entry, anything that put money in my account.
It’s not a career. It’s just a job.
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save and invest only makes sense if you can afford to not pull all savings every 3-5 years due to some unfortunate life event I feel like.
I'm pretty well off but my friends are in that siutation
And how would they have fared without the money?
Some folks I know died in those situations.
That is why it is so important to save and invest.
$100/month in VOO isn’t going to do anything (except help people like me who already own a lot).
> the only way out of your mess is by you working your way out of your mess.
Third option is revolution. Could be violent, could be passive like not starting families, complaining on the internet, scrolling tiktok as long as the benefits and body allow, and suicide if necessary.
It is possible for too much of the benefits of working having too high of a likelihood of being captured by rent seekers to not make the work worth it. In old times, the lack of birth control made people have to work more due to needing to support kids, but if I didn’t have kids, I could get by with a much lower standard of living.
This is so clique it's painful.
Just grow up. Bootstraps! I did it, why can't you?
Well first off, you didn't do it, you got fucked up the ass and asked for more. Your parents and their parents lived in an America where one person could own a home, multiple cars, and care for a large family. They lived in an America where layoffs did not exist, where shareholders were at the bottom of the totem pole, and where companies like GE prided themselves in how much money they gave to their employees.
We now live in an America where GE has been run into the ground, dragged through hell, revived, and then damned again, only for the demon that did it to be praised as a Capitalist God - a template, an alchemist of money, who could seemingly create value out of thin air.
Of course, nobody has stepped back and asked what "value" we're measuring. Not that it matters, because whatever you measure, GE don't got it.
You could have been better off, but you weren't. You're complacent enough, but baby this train goes downtown. There's no reversing course. However hard it was for you, it will only get harder.
Of course, this is big picture stuff. Small picture, can you do things to help your situation? Of course you can. But those things become harder, they become rarer, they become more elusive.
Just get a job and you'll be good! Oh wait no, that doesn't work anymore. Just go to college and you'll be good! No wait, that doesn't work either. Well, just own a home, that's the path to financial freedom! Um, well, actually no not that either. Well just invest in the stock market!
Yes, great idea! I wonder how long that will last! I wouldn't hold your breath.
So do something about it
They cant fix the economy singlehandly. Blaming individuals for systemic problems is just avoidance.
The only thing they can control is themselves and their habits though.
I’m not avoiding the fact that the economy is fucked. I’m fully aware. It’s up to you how much you’re willing to continue to pay or what you’re willing to sacrifice. It sucks, but the only thing you can control is yourself.
It’s just generic advice that doesn’t even really apply to the fresh grads, their issue is not having any entry point to a career anymore.
I graduated 10 years ago and it’s a day and night difference. Whatever worked for me in 2015 will not work for a fresh grad today, the game is completely different.
But crying about not having a door to walk through isn’t going to change anything.
I graduated 20 years ago and it was different when you graduated just as it is different now. Things change. Economies change. Life changes. The advice I give is simply because that’s the only thing you can change. You and your habits.
I’m all for revolution.
I’m all for socialism w/ a sprinkle of free market capitalism.
I’m all for the better good of all fellow humans.
I empathize with fresh graduates who were told there would be ample jobs in their fields when they graduate 4-6 years from when they started. I struggle to empathize with those who see there are no jobs and do nothing. Anything is better than nothing.
>But crying about not having a door to walk through isn’t going to change anything.
Why is it such a problem for you that people talk about it openly? Why the need to pretend that everyone can have this under control? It seems to me that your advice is just about making you feel better about the situation, about pretending to ourselves that all issues are individual failures, that the world is fair.
I do not see people who argue with you calling for revolution, I am seeing them trying to talk about objective state of the world. You seem to be rejecting that description, because it involves things you or them cant control.
Constructive discussion on what we can do to fix this is welcome but open complaining isn’t going to change anything. It may be cathartic but it’s not productive.
I’m not blaming anyone or saying it’s anyone’s failure. I’m simply saying the only thing you can control is you and so it’s up to you to master your habits and desires so that you can afford a future you want.
Constructive discussion on HN wont change anything either. Moreover, looking at the politics, claiming that constructive discussions is how things are achieved seems to simply not be true. It actually seems like cathartic complaining and making noise has massively better to achieve a change or being heard, practically.
> ’m simply saying the only thing you can control is you and so it’s up to you to master your habits and desires so that you can afford a future you want.
Nah, there is no possibility "future you want" in your advice. It is just about hiding the reality creating vague feeling that people can control things. Even if they cant.
What you are actually saying is that there is no hope for change. Everybody knows your advice wont lead to a change. Worst, if one believes to your advice, they will vote for politicians who created current situation. Because they are the ones constantly blaming individuals for result of policies they pushed for.
"It is just about hiding the reality creating vague feeling that people can control things. Even if they cant."
Still, people have agency. If one doesn't see it like that in relation to their material stance then there must be a lot of things that are simply disconsidered from the list of possible options, for whatever reason. Nobody said the world is fine as is and that the blame is somehow all on the ones that are in unsavory positions now. The world is not fine (and never was, for a lot of folks that almost nobody talkes about). It's winter time in this industry and the new hatchlings have their future in question. Yes, there are factors out of their control (like LLMs) that led to this winter, but there's also the colective decision for a lot of kids of pursuing these cushy well-paid office jobs that made things worse by oversaturating the market. Now, of course that, being saddled with student debt and heavily invested by an already acquired degree, to consider the long-term career prospects outside the industry seems like a non-starter, yet it may be exactly what the labor market (and younglings' individual well-being) needs. Such a decision is just of the same kind as the one that brought them here. That's agency on the individual level. And lastly, it's best for everyone to understand, internalize, and accept (the more the better) the fact that nobody else should be expected to step in and fix things for you. Yes, there are many people trying to make the world a better place (as there are many who don't care), there are also people in power that are even supposed to do the same, yet if they manage or not to make it better for you is not a given. That's, whenever it happens, just a bonus. The rest is up to you, the adult.
Sure, but that's what I said. Your advice is just too broad. Boils down to "be frugal, invest what you can, network, find other career paths".
I think what would be useful for them is to have very concrete examples of what fields to pursue. I wish I knew myself.
This is so condescending and infantilizing of young people. Of course many of them have it hard. They’re not the first, and they won’t be the last, but they’ll figure it out.
I graduated right before the collapse in 2008, and I’ve spent the last 17 years hustling, scraping, and clawing to make, save, and invest every dollar I could. It wasn’t easy, and after a divorce and a recent layoff, it’s still not. Particularly in one of the most expensive cities in the world, with kids and child support.
I worry a lot about my kids and their future economic prospects. I don’t want them to suffer, but the reality is that suffering comes for all of us, and saving and investing has been good advice for millennia. Blaming others and refusing to take responsibility for your own life and predicament has never been good advice. I hope my kids have the strength of character to resist the learned helplessness you’re offering here.
What's condescending is telling a whole generation of people who are working two jobs and barely able to make rent to "save".
I'm older than you and now doing fine AND able to save/invest but after multiple once-in-a-lifetime events that reset all of my progress each time, the last thing I need to hear from some out-of-touch old person is bullshit avocado toast pull yourself up by your bootstraps comments.
Wait, so the entire generation is working two jobs, or they're unable to find work? I constantly hear both...which is it?
And no one here said anything about avocado toast or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Sounds like you're just making assumptions and ranting against a strawman.
Serious question: if your kids were in the situation you're talking about, struggling to pay rent, and you couldn't help them financially, what advice would you give them? What would you hope they'd do? I'm genuinely curious.
So you have two options. One, you can change your habits and save your money. Two, you can get a higher paying job and save your money.
Both options require effort and discipline. If someone working two jobs can’t make rent, then who is to blame for it not working out? Society? The government? Your landlord? Who? Who do you be angry towards if not yourself?
It’s out of touch because they are out of touch. I was out of touch. We all go through this and realize this is it. This is all there is. This is life. Welcome to being fully grown.
As I’ve said before - I’m here for the revolution if that’s what it takes. I’ll be on the front. I’m not rich. I’m not a home owner. I just know there’s only one path carved and they’re at the bottom of the slide hoarding it, taxing us more for each body down.
Capitalism is a disease but it’s been that way for multiple millennia. Humans vs humans. Survival of the fittest. Stuff they don’t teach in private school. Only the school of hard knocks. So, again, who do we blame, if not ourselves? Why do we buy the boomer products? Why do we subscribe to the boomer media? Why do we put up with it?
I'm a bit over 40, not liking parts of my FAANG job, worried I'll lose it, and worried no where in the industry is as fun as 12 years ago, but being on the low end of Fat FIRE makes it a lot easier.
FI is more valuable than RE. After three years or so I got the itch again and decided to self fund my own thing. Also looking back on around 10 years ago more fondly..
Yeah; I've heard a few people say versions of you get bored if you retire early, and I've soon to be retirees talk about how the people they know who retired to go do nothing just wasted away.
I like tech; my challenge now is finding a gig with interesting work and a good work-life balance and p75 pay. That, and knowing when I actually have enough net worth to have more freedom. The problem is you never think it's enough, but not because of greed, but because of fear.
Boredom is a personality trait IMHO. Some of us never get bored, there's only lack of time and funds for hobbies and exploring.
Boredom was real when I was a kid, pre-internet.
Now I never get bored. Things have changed, but yeah, boredom used to be a real thing that people experienced no matter what their personality traits were.
This is something my 12 years old self used to say.
Haha I'm old! Several up/down-votes and your comment... I guess I struck a nerve? I speak from experience, and I know other people who feel the same way. We may not be typical, but we exist.
At least you could have the decency to debate my comment instead of a feeble insult. My condolences.
I know a lot of people who retired early and are not bored. I know other people who went back to work (not always the same job) just because they needed something to do. People are different. If you need a boss to keep you busy doing something then you shouldn't retire. If you can find plenty of things to do in life (hobbies, travel...) then you can retire. Without knowing you I can't say what is right.
Of course your job/boss matters. Some are worse than others.
> Also looking back on around 10 years ago more fondly
When the work didn't suck and the product didn't suck.
So it’s not just me
Being FI helped me out greatly in December 2020 when My company laid off half of my team and expected me to take on double the load, including lots of extra after hours on-call support. I had a pretty great time not working for ~3 years during Covid. However, I am back to work after an old friend and boss offered me a WFH job that I couldn't refuse. He has since retired so I will stick around until current management pisses me off again, they downsize me or I just get sick of logging into teams/outlook at 7AM every morning.
That advice isn't correct for someone who is just finishing school now. They need to stay alive in a down ecconomy where they can't find a job.
In a couple years when things recover (or at least they find a job) it starts to be good advice. Even then I question max 401k - time works for the young and so a maxed 401k makes for too much money in retirement and not enough to enjoy now. Save for retirement yes, but max is too much when you are young - and if you keep saving will always be too much. Max 401k is good for the rich, or those who didn't start young and so their accounts are way behind.
>Even then I question max 401k - time works for the young and so a maxed 401k makes for too much money in retirement and not enough to enjoy now.
Except the 401k is so tax advantaged that you are foolish to not use it as your basis for financial security. Pre-tax money + employer contributions mean 401k is far and away the fastest method of building up a significant chunk of capital to protect yourself from hardship. Yes there are penalties for early withdraw, but they come out far less than what you would alternately be able to build up with just post-tax savings from your paycheck.
Again, how much money do you need? At some point you are taking a risk, and I don't know any seer/medium/prophet/God/gods who both are talking and I trust (plenty are talking that I don't trust). Even if follow your plan of emergency savings from the 401k, you still don't need to max things out as you should be taking some risk as odds are it won't happen anyway - frankly if things get that bad you should spend more time enjoying life now as your life after that emergency will be bad no matter what and so in the worst case you should save less.
If you save for retirement, you will be outbid for housing by those who are not saving.
And how are those who are not saving, affording to put down money for down payment and closing costs?
Saving for retirement doesn’t necessarily mean 401k but you can borrow from your 401k for down payment assistance so you really should be saving for your eventual retirement from day 1.
I meant for rent, and in aggregate.
Only if you bid on the same houses. Bid on a smaller house.
Don't forget too that inflation works for you! If you save and get in a nice house early and the STAY THERE (I can't emphasize enough how important this is - sometimes life forces you to move, but avoid it), your payments measured against inflation will go down - just put that difference into a 401k (that is don't do a cash out refinance along the way as so many do) and in 30 years the house is paid off and your have a great retirement account.
When you are in the early years the above plan looks impossible, but time is your friend.
Right, I am fortunate enough to be a homeowner but you do understand that telling a 30 year old with 4 roommates to “bid on a smaller house” is a bit tonedeaf, do you not?
Only to those who refuse to hear it. They will continue to ignore the advice while those who hear it put it into practice and when you’re both 50, they will have their house, a retirement account. While you’ll be bidding on your starter home.
"Why yes I know you're already scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to housing, but have you thought about finding something even worse?"
In all honesty, when was the last time you tried to rent a place to live? My brother makes decent money in his mid-20's and _still_ wound up living out of his car for a couple months when his attempt to find something cheaper backfired.
Yesterday actually. Don’t assume you know someone’s position simply because they give you advice you don’t want to hear. I lived in my car for 6 months. I’ve been through tough times, homelessness, home ownership, all of it. Currently I spent the last 9 months trying to find a new place to live.
Plans fail. Have backup plans. Attempting to min max has disadvantages too. My advice has always come from experience and never “this is what they say you should do”. I would not be so presumptuous.
Others are criticizing you but the reality is that people usually spend more and save less than they could. There are plenty of people with modest income who manage to build a decent retirement. But it takes discipline. You have to be okay with sacrificing for the future.
As an "Old" who was a kid in the late 70s to early 90s, I'm telling young folks that there is no first world poverty like there was then. Not just because "we" were poor, but because you couldn't get "stuff" anyway. Like, the biggest TV I ever saw back them was 25". Nobody had a computer. Unemployment across the board was high. I saw my first kiwi fruit or avocado when I was 10. Clothes were expensive (even thrift / store brand). "Stuff" of any kind was expensive or non existent.
Yesterday my BIL threw a perfectly working tower PC in the recycling because he couldn't find anyone (not even a charity shop) to take it. Last time I was at e-waste I saw half a dozen 42 inch TVs that I'm willing to bet we're working.
However we were wealthy in one way: we had a stable home, and optimism. I may have had old clothes, one pair of worn shoes and a 4th-hand uncool bicycle, but there was no question of ever losing the roof over my head. And there was a future that looked like it was full of possibilities. "Stuff" was getting cheaper and more available. I remember our family being able to afford our first microwave oven. Our first VCR (1991). We didn't get rich, things got cheaper.
Today, it's like we're looking at the future as if we're already post-peak, and it's all downhill from here. There's tons of stuff around but nobody wants it. People have also lost the positive attitude, optimism. It'll get you through a lot of bad times. Years and years of shit. Lose optimism, and it's all bleak no matter how big your TV is.
If I could choose a safe to be reborn in, I'd take "our" poverty of the past over this.
In the part of the world I'm form, my childhood of the 90's to early 00's was exactly the same, and I experienced explosive increase in "stuff" surrounding me. Going from landline phones and phonebooths as status quo - to mobile internet just in 10 years. But I digress. Your point made me wonder - is it possible that the culture of material wealth - is the problem here? Could we have stepped on a poisonous flower - and now suffocating in the abundance of stuff we dreamed about as young people, now realizing, but not brave enough to admit that there is no meaning in it? And the optimism we had then, was a byproduct of a tighter communities, common struggles and just the architecture of life where we had to interact and care for one another more?
Are we post peak?
Everyone is worried about AI for good reason but if he's the promise is true then we see significant productivity improvements.
The pie might be shared out worse than even today but there would be more pie.
We are in a period of deglobalisation, but also a period of reorganisation. Today's supply chain is less efficient than 2021s. We are materially poorer as a result. But after the dust settles, it will be a lot more efficient than it is right now. Even with no ai.
Potentially we are in a dip. Stuff for worse, but it can get better.
I'm younger than you - probably median HN age - but I've felt the exact same way for 10 or so years now. Just like you're saying, my generation has it objectively very good from a consumerist abundance PoV. Part of it is lower quality materials and manufacturing, but even if you disregard that factor, it almost certainly still holds. But that increase in material wealth hasn't brought happiness; if anything, it has done the opposite.
The optimism decline feels like it really started around 2001, and the downward curve has steadily continued ever since, down and down. Worst of all, it seems completely warranted, even if you try to look at it as objectively as possible, disabling news-headline-induced emotions as we're all prone to. The world has gotten too complex, everything too intertwined, making for an increasingly volatile and dangerous system.
And besides that major trend, it's also just many of the smaller things getting worse by the year - enshittification of both physical and digital goods, declining government services and so on.
[dead]
>the reality is that people usually spend more and save less than they could.
You can't save your way out of rent being 70, 80+% of your paycheck. For my area, minimum wage is $18 and your best hope for rent is sharing a $3k 2 bedroom apartment. quick napkin math suggests $2400 take home pay and ~$1800 eaten up between the rent split, utilities, gas, and the most basic rice and beans diet of "groceries". Not even including potential health insurance or car notes or student loans.
If you don't have the fortune of a family who'd house you for free/dirt cheap then you don't have much to save. You're already sacrificing for the present.
Renters, make sure you vote. NIMBY really hurts you when the house owners who vote make it impossible for you to get affordable rent. Rental properties get higher property taxes: rent goes up, or the quality of the house goes down. When cheap apartments cannot legally be built: there are no cheap apartments.
Some of the YIMBY stuff is coming in the form of stricter environment regulations and even union labor rules and high minimum wage. Looking at you, NYC, where building 99 unit buildings and no more is the norm because otherwise the wage becomes $40/hr. It's called 485-x.
There's no escape in the US from the problem. It's either California with weird complicated property tax laws that make no one sell, Texas with unlimited and disgusting urban sprawl, Florida with shoddy construction, or NYC with big headaches tied to strict building incentives for tax breaks.
The answer could be ugly - less regulation, but now you're going red and not blue, which is very much the opposite attitude that many pro urbanization folks tend to be.
I'm not sure, other than I think the issue is that it's not Not Enough Building. It's that we allow investors to buy everything up. In NYC this year, 40 percent of condo transactions were without financing contingency. Explain that one.
> I tell the younger generation the same thing. Save, invest, max 401k, before you go off and party. Your older self will thank you.
401k max is $24,500. How much do you expect a person to earn to be able to max it out? And what percentile income is that at the bottom and top of the age range you consider “young”?
https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-by-age-calculator/
Tldr: you are telling almost every 20 to 30 year old to not party.
If you are offered a 401k, you have the means to max it out. People who make less than $60k aren’t usually offered 401k’s.
I’m not telling you to forgo partying. I’m telling you to pay yourself first, before you do. Don’t max out a credit card for a trip. Don’t cover the table’s check when you only have $200. Be responsible, but still have fun.
>If you are offered a 401k, you have the means to max it out.
Given rent, saving for house downpayment, student loan payments, auto loan payments, and possible childcare/healthcare costs, I don’t think we live in the same reality (based on income statistics). Perhaps you are only referring to doctors/software engineers/lawyers/IB/PE employees?
>I’m not telling you to forgo partying. I’m telling you to pay yourself first, before you do. Don’t max out a credit card for a trip. Don’t cover the table’s check when you only have $200. Be responsible, but still have fun.
This is very different than:
>Save, invest, max 401k, before you go off and party.
> Given rent, saving for house downpayment, student loan payments, auto loan payments, and possible childcare/healthcare costs, I don’t think we live in the same reality (based on income statistics).
These things all come after savings, not before. If you can't afford them using post-saving money, then you need to get a better job, or a cheaper living conditions. Easier said than done, I totally agree, especially nowadays. But that's the mentality you need to really take saving seriously.
They don’t want to hear it. They don’t understand because they haven’t hit middle aged with nothing. Experience is one hell of a teacher and I hope these young professionals realize what’s at stake. There’s no hand outs.
I hope they realize that they are probably going to have to take their fair share with violence because right now that is probably the only thing the wealthy class will listen to
If it has to come to that…
People still have the power. Always have. They just need a reason to wield it.
Not in a democracy where the population age histogram gets top heavy and the old vote themselves more and more of the young’s income, explicitly via taxes and implicitly via backstopping asset prices at the expense of the currency’s purchasing power (since wage increases lag asset price increases).
The old need a way to maintain a socioeconomic order where they can continue to get labor from the young, but demographics are going to make that harder and harder.
You’re not wrong and it’s going to be an interesting next 20 years when there isn’t the young population to prop up the old due to economic depression.
Rent comes after savings? Are you insane? And what if there are no better jobs that allow you to afford both rent and savings, as rent has increased for decades while wages have remained stagnant?
Why can't you just admit that millions of young people are being intentionally screwed out of what we consider to be a basic standard of living?
A younger person shouldn't max out their 401k unless they are rich. When you are young time works for you and so a maxed out 401k is a very large retirement in the future (which you might not even live to see!). The max is useful for older people who didn't start young.
Worst advice ever. Maxing out early is like throwing a boulder down a mountain as opposed to a stone. The sooner you start the better in the long run.
What they have to avoid is cashing it out when times get hard.
This is bad advice. Max out 401k early. Compounding growth is how you get rich / FI. The earlier you start, the more time to compound.
I have known several people who died before they reached 50. I have known a number of others who retired early because the doctor (correctly) said their cancer is incurable - they had 9 months to enjoy all that savings. I knew someone who planed a great retirement, and her health declined such that even though she lived to 76 (just under average) her entire retirement was spent making regular trips to the hospital and even when not in the hospital her pain was such that she couldn't enjoy anything in life (her husband had a few years to enjoy the savings after she died).
If you know for sure exactly how long you will live and how good your quality of life will be then the advice to max out early is probably good. However you don't know - average advice is good for average but if you are an outlier it isn't useful and you don't know. As such you need to compromise and part of that means you enjoy a little more now when you know you can, as opposed to a lot more in the future if you live that long. Exactly what they means is personal of course, but this conflict is why I would suggest a more modest retirement.
In all of those cases, all of that 401k money is freely available to use. They would be dead if it wasn’t for the fact they saved and had it. How hard is this to understand? It’s designed to trap your money on purpose so you save it because you’ll end up spending it and not having the resources for your health in the end.
Besides, once you have a healthy 401k, you’ll realize there’s things you can do with it in the short term. Like borrow for a down payment. Use it for hospital bills. Funerals. Hardship withdrawals. Even a Roth has this. Saving vs spending will always be the story of the grasshopper and the ants.
I pray you are right and I'm wrong. But I do have reasons to believe that this time is a bit different.
In all the previous job market contractions the root cause has been money - increasing costs, less investment capital, etc. This is the first time the root cause appears to be tech (if you believe the announcements about layoffs). That makes it different.
Nah. It's not different. Money in the tech industry has always chased the hype cycle. We're approaching the peak of inflated expectations for LLMs and then in a few years the AI industry will crash into the trough of disillusionment. That doesn't mean that LLMs are useless but in many sectors of the real economy they will have only a slow and limited impact.
https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hy...
Its just so weird how demonstrably insane the hype cycle this time around is. Everytime I think ChatGPT and Gemini are improving, it hits me with some monstrously stupid hallucinations. Here's how my conversation with GPT 5.1 went this afternoon:
>Can you please provide a reference for the assertion you just made
>Sure, here it is: <link>
> 404, please double check
> I apologize for the mistake, I have double checked, here is the corrected link: <link>
> Still 404, please always double check a link by actually visiting and reading it
x5 before I gave up.
The hype cycle was just was weird every other time too.
> but not some fresh graduates who can work 80 hours per week and only demand half of the salary
Cause garbage in, gets garbage out. With AI models being all the more rage in the coming years, unexperienced hires will prove many times more costly. (10x garbage with agents).
So companies are going to concentrate their worker base even more with experienced folks. They need fewer of them. Yes. But quality matters more than ever.
I really feel bad for the new graduates. For no fault of their own, the bar went up so high. Unless they’re a child prodigy doing some coding projects on the side since the age of 10 - no one will hire them. So how will they ever gain the experience they need?
Maybe, just maybe, we’ll see a reinvention of coding schools - that will now focus on fundamental and industry knowledge - imparted by other veterans, instead of teaching applied skills.
I agree with you, but I forgot to mention that in the original reply I meant to say that "After the economy turns around, there is no point to hire me, an older guy with maybe a couple of gap years, who worked as a Uber driver for the last two years and can't leetcode".
But yeah, new graduates is going to suffer anyway.
And I'm scared of the collapse of the existing world order. Maybe we won't see a turn around for many years if it does collapse -- and we are already seeing many cracks on it.
New folks will never be hired. RIP to the CS degree.
Old staff will be exited. Especially senior and mid level management.
If you lose your job, you won't get the same comp again. The days of $500K TC are long behind us.
It's the era of downsizing and outsourcing while blaming AI.
None of this has anything to do with AI. That's just a scapegoat.
Google and Amazon are culling entire US teams and rebuilding them in Asia where the cost of labor is significantly lower.
The best thing ICs can do is fight for big tech monopolies to be broken up. (Call your reps leading up to the midterms.) If several members of the Mag 7 are broken up into smaller companies, that'll inject tons of energy back into the ecosystem and enable the wheels of competition and employment.
Bonus - if big conglomerates are fighting to pick up the pieces of a Ma Bell style dismantlement, they won't have time to manage teams 12 hours away.
Nothing against our colleagues in Asia. They're brilliant. But American companies built with American labor shouldn't shut us out in the cold while they reach record profits and continue to hollow out entirely new industries simply by outstretching their arms.
I’ve been told for 20 years that in 5 years my job is going to be offshored. If they could have they would have long ago.
My theory: We had a crazy bubble of hiring during zero rate interest. We are living through a nasty correction. AI is moving the needle too, but it’s mostly being used as a scapegoat to save face and explain away cleaning up failed ZRIP yolo plans that didn’t pan out.
We’ve also haven’t had a serious recession since 2009. It feels like it’s only a matter of time :(
> I’ve been told for 20 years that in 5 years my job is going to be offshored. If they could have they would have long ago.
"This time it's different."
20 years ago China and India had a nascent tech industry. Now they're booming.
Talented folks all over the world - Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere - are working on hard problems.
> We had a crazy bubble of hiring during zero rate interest.
We did. This has had a tremendous impact, no doubt. But by the same coin, ZIRP has had half a decade to unwind at this point. There's other stuff going on. Tariffs, continued inflation, etc.
We're not the only industry offshoring. Hollywood has moved a lionshare of production overseas in the last 4 years. Graphics design and marketing... It's being shipped out at volume.
My personal experience, YMMV:
I was told that once video conferencing got good and internet and infrastructure became better in other places, "this time it will be different."
I was told once universities in other countries started pumping out a pool of great candidates, expats who worked for FAANGs in the US would go home to found their own companies using that pool, and those companies would take over the world. "this time it's different."
I was told during covid once everyone was remote, why would people not just hire the cheapest remote workers going forward? "This time it's different."
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely have seen more and more offshoring over time, but there's a huge inertia behind the US tech industry that's hard to change. The VC / startup ecosystem and all of it's resources have huge Bay Area inertia - it mostly hasn't even spread to the rest of the US, let alone the rest of the world, despite the cost of living and constrained talent pool in the Bay Area. There's something about getting a bunch of people with the same mindset in one spot and having them know each other, socialize with each other, make friends and networks with each other that still matters. Founders tend to build off the people and connections they know and are connected with personally.
I'm hoping it will take long enough to change for me to finish my career. We'll see. This time really may be different :).
EDIT: p.s. Agree totally it's way to complex to tell what's actually happening. The _impact_ of the end of ZRIP, the rise of AI, major tax changes on R&D amortization, and US tariffs pretty much landed at the same time, so who knows?
The difference is, offshoring in the 2000s was largely private sector driven with minimal subsidizes and investment promotion programs lead by countries and their local governments.
On the other hand, in the 2020s, India, Israel, most Eastern European states, Ireland, Costa Rica, and a couple others have launched industrial promotion subsidizes for software offshoring - often providing US$10k-30k per head in federal and local subsidizes along with subsidized office space and real estate and tax windows.
That along with the internal frictions of async work largely being ironed out due to the COVID remote work period along with an exodus of mid-level managers on work visas during the early pandemic layoffs which had an outsized impact on Indian, Chinese, and Eastern European techies in the US made offshoring much more cost competitive and effective than it was 25 years ago.
Putting your head in the sand saying it's no big deal is honestly very stupid if you are hoping to maintain your career for the next 5-10 years in any white collar job.
And it's only going to get even more competitive now that the Indian government is enacting labor reform laws to align Indian labor laws with China's [0], making it even more cost effective for businesses to offshore by reducing regulatory overhead [1].
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-21/india-imp...
[1] - https://www.fortuneindia.com/business-news/tech-sector-expec...
> On the other hand, in the 2020s, India, Israel, most Eastern European states, Ireland, Costa Rica, and a couple others have launched industrial promotion subsidizes for software offshoring - often providing US$10k-30k per head in federal and local subsidizes along with subsidized office space and real estate and tax windows.
This isn't true either in India or most of eastern europe.
Maybe you are confusing PLI for manufacturing? Altough even that's not on per head basis.
> This isn't true either in India or most of eastern europe.
It is.
Wage arbitrage doesn't move the needle for offshoring once operating costs come to play, and outsourcing companies like EPAM, WITCH, and others juiced their margins by padding heavily, which further reduced the cost competitiveness of outsourcing without subsidies.
Czechia [0], individual Volvodships along with the federal government in Poland [1], state+center in India [2][3], Ireland [4], Romania [5], and others [6] dated list from KPMG which doesn't include state and local incentives) are all providing subsidies for GCCs now which include a payroll/per-head incentive depending on the amount spent in FDI, along with added additional subsidies per industry (eg. Life sciences GCCs get additional sets of subsidies versus a generic software GCC versus a VFX GCC).
The US has some of the weakest R&D tax incentives globally [6], with no payroll or financing incentives - only Vietnam, Philippines, Peru, and PNG are stingier, which has been a major role for why GCC expansion has been rapidly growing for the past few years.
That said, these incentives are primarily targeted at large employers becuase if you cannot provide at the minimum dozens of jobs, then the cost cannot be recouped over the long term by most subsidies. So mom-and-pop 3 person consultancies are ignored because in most cases they are parasites and large firms interested in opening large dedicated headcount offices are incentivized.
[0] - https://czechinvest.gov.cz/en/For-Investors/Investment-Incen...
[1] - https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/pl/pdf/services/for...
[2] - https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=93f90e07-581d...
[3] - https://inductusgcc.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/INDIAS-GC...
[4] - https://www.idaireland.fr/getmedia/4f70d494-8ec1-4e3d-b5a5-1...
[5] - https://kpmg.com/kpmg-us/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2021/global-rd...
I got my first programming job in ~98 while still in college. I had family members telling me then that programming was a dead end and was all going to be outsourced. I lived through .com, GFC, etc... This does feel more like a reversion to the mean at this moment rather than some crash...yet. I feel for the people who only have known a job market that was easy to step into and paid great salaries because they don't know anything else. It's a lot like the people who think they are great stock pickers because they've only been investing in the greatest bull market we've ever seen.
When I came into the job market the rule of thumb was it would take 1 month/10k of salary to find a new job. Over time that moved to 1 month/20k of salary or so. Even then, someone making a FAANG type salary should be prepared to look for a ~year for a new job matching that salary. Being able to bounce from job to job while getting big raises along the way was the exception, and ZIRP only exacerbated it.
You're zooming out and considering this negative sentiment with similar times in the past. I think that's wise. I think we should keep zooming out to other industries. Imagine you're an engineer for GM in Detroit in the 70s - would you consider the mean to be your contemporary middle-class lifestyle, or what it is in 2025? Similar for steel and semiconductors.
It goes for other places, too. Is the US's financial strength of today its mean, or is it where the UK was pre-Suez Crisis? Where Japan was in the 80s?
Let’s hypothetically say we’re all doomed. Say our jobs are going the way of manufacturing in the 70s-80s. What’s the play then?
If I was a new college grad I’d stay away from programming, but that’s been true for a while regardless of offshoring, the job market is just too soft until managers figure out they are killing their senior engineer pipeline and go back to investing in people.
What about the people already in industry? What’s our play?
Live under your means and save as much as possible? Already doing it.
Learn a new trade? Does not feel realistic while working a demanding full time job already, but if things get bad enough, sure.
Use the political apparatus to protect my employment? The system is built to prevent me from doing that. Fighting the system very well could put my employment at risk, which defeats the whole “get what I can while I still can” plan, if I assume doom and gloom on the horizon. I’m also unlikely to actually change anything by taking that risk, so the ROI is horrible.
Is there some other outcome or plan of action here I’m not seeing?
Good question. I've gone with:
>Live under your means and save as much as possible?
which, while obvious, isn't being done by all of us.
A part of me gets angry that collective action was so unpopular thanks to the view that it dragged down those who could excel individually. Every time I see software people act powerless in front of these steamrolling, enormous tech giants that control every facet of our lives, I think about how much power we had - and are on the verge of giving up.
I also try to confront the future, rather than turn a blind eye to it. Can I be happy and find self-actualisation without this identity and financial status? That's a question everyone should think about regardless of what happens.
I love the idea of FIRE as a life goal and driving financial strategy. The core principal is you save enough money up that the dividends from your investment returns (the FI part of FIRE) is enough to live off forever.
If you hit FIRE, awesome, you’re free from ever caring about offshoring or RTO or AI or whatever again.
If you don’t hit it, you’re sitting on a pile of money when a rainy day comes.
I've had my job offshored in the past, in case a personal anecdote is relevant here.
Sorry that happened to you :(
Adding my voice to sibling comments, this is from European experience, I have had several times been dumped from consulting projects, and having to do competence transfer to the offshoring team that would take over our team roles.
Around five times since 2007.
This is not the picture I'm seeing on the ground. AI is eliminating certain classes of junior software positions. (Roughly: jobs where explaining a task to junior engineer is more work than asking Cursor/Claude Code/Codex to do it.) Junior engineers can fight back against this by
a) getting really good at clarifying requirements
b) learning quickly, so their work quality is eventually higher than Cursor can work out in one shot.
This is also a pressure against hiring teams overseas: when the bottleneck is communication + taste, not raw implementation cycles, you'd rather have a small local team. And it's a pressure for high TC, because individuals now have much more leverage, although they need to master more skills to take advantage.
>Junior engineers can fight back against this by
Many juniors can't even meet with a human interviewer. There's no point maximizing for interviews that never come. That's the issue.
>This is also a pressure against hiring teams overseas:
This seems to agree with the issue. a team of 100 becomes a team of 5 locals and 95 outsourced work. Maybe those 5 managers are better off, but we're still reducing the local workforce by 95%.
And I doubt the conditions of the remaining 5 are better than pre-outsourcing. You can't out-compensate burnout and QoL. Gen Z in particular seems to really be pushing against this mentality, so this strategy is limited in time even if it's working on Gen X/Millenials.
Surely people who can't get a job aren't "junior engineers" - they're just graduates.
Junior engineers, i.e. people who have already been hired, can indeed fight back by getting really good at their jobs.
But you're right, it doesn't help you get hired if you can't even get an interview.
Being real good does not change the fact, that one is cost factor and at the end only a row in payroll spreadsheet. Junior with low salary and low compensation during layoff -> priority departure.
Having in couple hours unannounced meeting. My boss told me over private channel, that he just got fired. It’s very interesting and the home mortgage does not really help today. I was really good. Better than expected and accomplished few optional projects. Looks like it didn’t help again.
> learning quickly, so their work quality is eventually higher than Cursor can work out in one shot.
This sounds almost word for word like The Onion’s classic: Secretary Of Labor Assures Nation There Still Plenty Of Jobs For Americans Willing To Outwork Robots
[0] https://theonion.com/secretary-of-labor-assures-nation-there...
Wow. That is ... too painful and true to life to really be funny at this point. But, ok, still funny.
To be fair, I meant something a little different -- something like -- learn how to be a robot priest who can get it to follow the desperate prayers of humans. And, like, how to unstick the robot arm when it accidentally punches through a wall. Etc.
Not that that is particularly comforting, in an existential sense. Maybe buys you a couple years till you have to pivot again.
If "a couple of years until you have to pivot again" is all new grads have to hope for, they might as well forget it
Instead they should start learning how to shoot guns and build pipe bombs.
> when the bottleneck is communication + taste
That was the bottleneck in the industry when it was in growth phase, it's a mature sector now and it's all about efficiency and profit now. Speed to market and product iteration speed isn't the most important thing anymore, there's not a lot of innovation taking place. Outside the actual novel AI specific companies out there, of course, there are a few other spots of growth and exceptional companies but largely the kings have been crowned.
Show of hands for anyone seeing AI replacing juniors (and I assume also backfilling employees).
I'm genuinely curious.
I've heard this argued the other way too. Seen it firsthand.
Fwiw, we've had good engineers switch to vibe coding and it's ruined their output.
From really solid systems to unmaintainable flocks of seagulls - nested if statements ten levels deep with no thought or care. From good engineers that are just dialing it in now.
We've had good engineers use vibe coding to save to time to work on their side hustles. Then go on to try to raise money for AI products.
I lead cloud consulting projects as a staff consultant specializing in application development.
I use to need myself to lead the project, customer management, design work and some development. I would add usually another developer to do some of the grunt work coding and usually a cloud architect to take care of infrastructure as code, security, etc.
Not that I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to do it all myself, I just didn’t have time. GenAI can definitely do CloudFormation, Terraform or the AWS CDK (ie using a high level language like Typescript instead of Yaml) and can do the code where I really don’t need two other resources or deal with the detailed requirements and coordination.
Before the pearl clutching starts about my not knowing how to code without AI. I’ve been coding consistently since 1986 when I was a hobbyist assembly language coder.
> We've had good engineers use vibe coding to save to time to work on their side hustles. Then go on to try to raise money for AI products.
It seems to be working…
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Uy2aWoeRZopMIaXXxY2E...
> GenAI can definitely do CloudFormation, Terraform or the AWS CDK
GenAI does not exist yet.
Generative, not general
this is honestly what i think is going to happen as everyone is still figuring this out and why for large companies i think they are walking into a giant ass trap and the execs can't or don't care to see it as long as it boosts the stock.
most people (read: MOST) working at X corp aren't going to be using AI to accelerate their work, they are going to "phone it in" like you said or buy themselves more time to do other stuff. i think with the onslaught of vibe and slop most people don't have a vested interest to go above and beyond to ensure quality as long as it works, even experienced devs. that's honestly probably what i'd be tempted to do.
where we see the most exponential gains will be people who are paid enough to care, smaller teams that have a direct vested interest in long term success (founding teams, etc.) or people paid to just clean up a mess.
hiring and the landscape will be super interesting to see in the next year or so. probably team structure will change drastically as well.
Yeah pretty much. Engineers are going to be at a crossroad where they either turn to the government to finally build in some proper labor laws and other obvious controls (how about re-banning stock buybacks?) or go out to the Wild West and hope they idea can sustain their livelihood.
Given the vibes of the community here: I guess I'll look for a Mad Max mask (I'll ofc keep performing my civic duties, though).
A big tech breakup needn't be anti-capitalist. In fact, it might be the most pro-capitalist move.
If you're an entrepreneur or VC, you want big tech broken up because they can put serious price pressure on your exit.
Trillion dollar companies can easily spin up a team to copy you, with no incentive to stay alive. They can threaten you with all kinds of leverage - access to customers, patents, legislators. They can give you an ultimatum to sell for cheap, go to your competitor, etc.
Their scale and reach is additional unexpected gravity on your delta V.
Capitalism is supposed to be hard. It isn't supposed to support invasive species that can graze anywhere they please and kill ecosystems of diversity and innovation. These mega conglomerates can just throw themselves into markets using unrelated business unit profit and suffocate real companies.
Breaking up Google and Amazon would be good for everyone, perhaps even shareholders and ICs at those companies themselves if value is unlocked. Let alone all of the other companies and entrepreneurs in the market.
I think it depends on which kind of entrepreneur you're aiming to be. VC breakups are amazing if your goal is to box in and become a market competitor. But as of the last decade or so there's been plenty of "incubators" to take into account. startups whose goal is instead to be sold off to some major company and get their payday that way. Those kinds of models would deteriorate, and are likely what want to prop Big Tech up.
I do hope we have more genuine competitors fighting out there for breakupps. But it's hard to say these days.
> But as of the last decade or so there's been plenty of "incubators" to take into account. startups whose goal is instead to be sold off to some major company and get their payday that way. Those kinds of models would deteriorate,
Good, because this is an extremely toxic and damaging version of capitalism
Every company should be seeking to stand on its own, not become assimilated by the borg
> how about re-banning stock buybacks?
This is pretend boogie man. Banning buybacks will not automatically make that money flow into hiring or salaries. Companies are not charities, they exist to make a return. If hiring people and/or paying more will generate a larger return than giving the money back to shareholders either through buybacks or dividends, then companies will do that.
AI is now giving companies something to do with excess cash that could generate better returns (shareholders believe so) and buybacks are being pushed out as money goes elsewhere[1].
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/move-over-stock-buybacks-ai-1...
>Banning buybacks will not automatically make that money flow into hiring or salaries.
Nope, but that's what trends show us from the decades between its ban and bans being lifted. All I know is that companies flowing money back into itself and having executives shift in and out every few years clearly hasn't worked.
It's just one stepping stone to make sure companies have skin in the game again.
You can argue dividends but that means the money gets taxed quicker, so that also helps the people.
>AI is now giving companies something to do with excess cash that could generate better returns
Sure, for now. I think that problem will fix itself sooner than later, so I'm not too concerned about that. Trends come and go.
Why not just stop taxing dividends? CIT already has been paid on it, so why charge PIT on it? Like estonia.
That would mean there's no incentive for companies to buy back stock instead of dividends.
> turn to the government to finally build in some proper labor laws and other obvious controls (how about re-banning stock buybacks?)
What would banning stock buybacks accomplish? Companies can still return capital to shareholders in the form of dividends.
Dividends are immediately taxable.
Stock buybacks are designed to let the shareholder see the same upside, but decide when to take the taxable event. Long term gains are also preferable to non-qualified dividends.
Even worse for non-American stockholders of American companies - the IRS charges a 30% foreign withholding tax on dividends. If you ban stock buybacks in favour of dividends, it’s a big tax increase on foreigners, so US stocks lose a whole pile of value for American stockholders when foreigners dump American equities until the ROI equalizes. (Roughly 20% of US equities are foreign-owned.)
They’ll funnel it through a US based shell company. C’mon now.
Sure, but there are still market impacts from e.g. banning buybacks and foreigners dumping AAPL to funnel their funds via BRK.
Dividends don't grow the stock as quickly. They can and will do that, but the goal is to change the incentive structure back to long term growth and not "stock buyback and dip from company in a year".
There is no evidence to indicate buybacks reduce long term incentives for executives compared to dividends.
If anything, all the businesses with the most long term growth have done the most buybacks because they are paying the employees in stock, which employees gladly accept because they bet the business will have long term growth.
And executive compensation is not vested until business targets are met a few years in the future.
> There is no evidence to indicate buybacks reduce long term incentives for executives compared to dividends.
If I am bonused on earnings per share, and I have a button to increase earnings per share mechanically (without needing to increase revenue or decrease costs), why wouldn't I push that button?
Can you share some evidence around your statement? i.e. "There is no evidence to indicate buybacks reduce long term incentives for executives compared to dividends."
> If I am bonused on earnings per share, and I have a button to increase earnings per share mechanically (without needing to increase revenue or decrease costs), why wouldn't I push that button?
Examining fantastical scenarios is a waste of time. No one has that button, there is a whole board of directors that votes on these things, and again, compensation is staggered over various performance targets staggered over a number of years. The proxy reports detailing these are easily accessible with an online search.
> Can you share some evidence around your statement? i.e. "There is no evidence to indicate buybacks reduce long term incentives for executives compared to dividends."
Reality. The businesses that have the best long term performance over the previous decades are the ones that have done the most buybacks, hence buybacks do not cause short term-ism. It’s just as easy as a business cutting expenses now to juice dividends in the near term, we’ve seen it time and time again with businesses that sacrifice quality and innovation in the short term which eventually cede ground to new businesses.
> Reality. The businesses that have the best long term performance over the previous decades are the ones that have done the most buybacks, hence buybacks do not cause short term-ism. It’s just as easy as a business cutting expenses now to juice dividends in the near term, we’ve seen it time and time again with businesses that sacrifice quality and innovation in the short term which eventually cede ground to new businesses.
So no source(s) then?
Your statement is just as un-evidenced as mine, so I'm uncertain why you seem to be so sure of your statement.
> Examining fantastical scenarios is a waste of time. No one has that button, there is a whole board of directors that votes on these things, and again, compensation is staggered over various performance targets staggered over a number of years. The proxy reports detailing these are easily accessible with an online search.
If I can reduce the number of shares, then I can increase EPS. Buybacks reduce the number of shares. The button clearly exists, and based on watching this happen it's clear that the button gets pressed pretty often.
> The businesses that have the best long term performance over the previous decades are the ones that have done the most buybacks, hence buybacks do not cause short term-ism
This is mixing up cause and effect. If I have lots of free cash flow, then I can do buybacks which increases EPS. Lots of free cash flow is associated with better performance, which is perhaps why people believe this.
> New folks will never be hired. RIP to the CS degree.
We've just hired a couple of graduates, with the expectation that they are going to take some time to grow.
What I'm seeing right now is a huge influx of candidates from large companies that have zero skill. I'm not exaggerating, they can't code anything. And it's not just AI, they started working before ChatGPT came out.
Others in the industry are seeing the same and it's quite likely that your resume is getting lost.
One practical advice for resume writers from me. PLEASE, just don't put stuff like "Improved the API responsiveness by 23.123897%". Unless it's a crazy number like 100x.
We posted a job a year ago for a dev. We received terrible candidates, but still tried to fill it from the pool. 2/3 ghosted the interview and the other I'm not sure had ever done anything in iOS. I just pulled the job instead of wasting more time. I'm planning to post another job in the new year and I'm not looking forward to wading through the garbage.
> What I'm seeing right now is a huge influx of candidates from large companies that have zero skill. I'm not exaggerating, they can't code anything. And it's not just AI, they started working before ChatGPT came out.
This has been true in software for decades. From the very first time I was senior enough in my career to start conducting interviews on the "employer" side of the table, we've seen a huge number of candidates who literally (in the literal meaning of literally) could not code. Like you would ask them to write a for loop, and they froze up and couldn't do it, or just started talking, hoping we would move onto more "behavioral" questions. This has been pretty much a constant in the software industry for as long as I've been in it.
> Nothing against our colleagues in Asia. They're brilliant. But American companies built with American labor shouldn't shut us out in the cold while they reach record profits and continue to hollow out entirely new industries simply by outstretching their arms.
What makes you think people in Asia wouldn’t benefit from more competition in the market as well?
That said - I feel that advertisement based markets will always consolidate. There is too much of a benefit to having a single network which has the largest reach in terms of audience to show ads. This will always create incentives to consolidate over time.
Then again, why make the perfect the enemy of the good. Getting to more competition is a good step.
> If you lose your job, you won't get the same comp again. The days of $500K TC are long behind us.
I wouldn't be so sure about that, unless you mean $500K TC in 2019 dollars.
ZIRP might just come back, but it'll come with a higher price tag than the one from 2008.
We haven’t passed the stage where we convince policy makers to stop dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
We’re not going to convince anyone to keep hiring software developers.
I think we ought to be keeping people trained and employed but it seems we’re not on the winning side here.
We gotta gather ourselves and remind companies why they once paid handsomely to not let potential disruptiors run rampant on the market. Long term new teams will form once productivity is valued again and not this giant incestuous GDP-maxmizing scheme.
On the long term, we're all dead.
I doubt things will recover to 2018 levels. Too many new software devs coming out each year, too much AI, too little big company growth once everyone already has an internet computer in their hands. The Wild West is over and now the digital economy has entered the boring phase.
The comparison to greenhouse gases doesn’t make sense. Corps pay a lot for developers right now because they get more value out of them than they cost. As long as that remains true, devs will be fine.
Part of being a developer is innovating as rapidly as possible. We obsolete our own practices in a regular basis.
We should be the last occupation to be replaced by machines.
Maybe I’m stupid, but I’m stupidly optimistic.
> I think we ought to be keeping people trained and employed
I never understood this sentiment. We don't have a massive manual weaving industry anymore, 95%+ of people used to be farmers in 1900. Tech comes and replaces humans, and the transition can be extremely painful especially for the people replaced, but ultimately it's better than keeping people artificially employed in obsolete jobs.
(I don't think SWE will be obsolete, but even in this case I'd rather switch careers)
Most deindustrialized regions in the West haven't recovered to full prosperity and are quite depressing to live in, sometimes even 30-40 years later: US Rust Belt, Wallonia in Belgium, the French North East, etc.
At a large enough scale, most people don't really move on, their lives are wrecked and they just suffer through them.
This is predicated on the myth that people can re-skill and move into new industries. Sure the former can happen and people can learn new things. But we're talking about an economy where there are no new industries. And an economy where you have to work in order to live.
What's a software developer in their 30s, 40s, and 50s supposed to re-skill into? Take on debt for the rest of their lives and re-skill into a profession (if they can even afford to take several years out of their lives to go back to school)? Into blue collar work along with the salary cut for which they might not have the physical capabilities for?
There's no social system for providing the necessities for living.
The other side of it is skill. Human societies have lost knowledge before. We've had to rediscover various aspects of metallurgy before. We could lose the ability to understand the technology we've made if we trust everything to the LLMs. There are already vibecoders who don't even be able to review the code that it generates for them because they're starting to lose the critical faculties and skills to understand it.
Or, more dystopian take... it won't matter. If software reliability continues to degrade in a normalized fashion, it won't matter. First mover advantages and networking effects will make it impossible for an outfit trafficking increased quality to ever get enough breaths to even compete.
Depends on your definition of “compete”. Compete for VC funding and continually increasing growth? You’re right. Compete as in stay profitable and have a future? Less clear-cut.
I saw this coming way before AI became a thing around 2016 when I was 42. Software development was becoming a commodity where there were plenty of “good enough” developers where no matter what, it was going to be saturated.
If someone is trying to sell themselves as an undifferentiated developer in 2025 or later, it’s going to be an uphill battle unless you can lean on your network.
At 51, if my only differentiator is I can code, I’ve done something horribly wrong in my life.
Anecdotally, I found software development adjacent roles quickly when I was looking both last year and the year before.
Software developer salaries went up significantly after 2016 and it was a super hot market for developers in 2020. So whatever you saw wasn’t a good indicator.
It's easier to lower standards than to raise them.
There's always a race to the bottom. I don't think it's a big leap to suggest that what's considered the "minimum viable product" has decreased over the years. It's also no secret that software is getting worse.
As to salaries, I think you forgot how things worked before. The reason companies like Google introduced free food and all the incentives was because increasing salaries was not a better way to attract better talent, since salaries were already high. So either now something has changed where better talent cares more about money or we're attracting talent that cares more about money. As in either the same people changed or we're attracting a different type of person. Personally, regardless of age, regardless of field, I've seen a strong correlation with the best people not caring as much about money. Once the salary is good then they care more about how interesting the work is or how they can reduce stress in their life. Money matters, but it has decreasing utility as it grows.
I feel this is more true in the sense that when they don't care about money you can get them below market value and not that they are better. I find the most valuable employees to be the financially literate ones. The ones who're constantly thinking about the money aspect.
'Will we get more customers?' 'Will they be more likely to stay with us?' 'Are we screwing ourselves out of sales by offering to host a server for remote control on the PC connected to the tool, even though it's cool and we can implement it in a week?'
I'm more on the 'do it because it's cool' side and have had to be wrangled a couple times with such questions since what makes interesting work for myself often doesn't align with client needs or hurts sales, as stupid as it might be.
I have had 10 jobs over 30 years and I am now at only the third company where I gave two shits about the company’s success or saw it more than just a stepping stone to my n+1 company.
I agree with you completely. They can just keep giving me cost of living raises and respect my experience and opinions (not saying they always have to go along with them) and I will be the last person here if they shut the lights off.
I work in a consulting company where I lead projects and I have an almost obsessive commitment to seeing the customer happy within the constraints of our contract that I wouldn’t even think I was capable of earlier in my career.
I pay close to attention to my employer’s goals and strategies and stay aligned. I lurk in our sales Slack channel and care very much about how I can add revenue even though I know it wont make but a little difference in my comp.
FWIW: the other two companies I cared about deeply were startups where my opinion was respected and they gave me more autonomy than I could have ever expected. The first I was leading a project for their largest customer and the second a decade later I was just kind of thrown the reigns of our cloud architecture strategy even though I had no experience at the time.
I think that's an important thing to note here, where the loyalty lies. Viewing from the lens of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy it's clear you're loyal to the goals of the company more than the organization of company. Which in that case yes, I agree those are the best employees
You just made me do a deep dive on “Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy”.
I had to think about this. The three companies I’ve actually cared about were those that I had already “won” the organizational rat race within my definition of winning. The first I was leading their largest project only because near the end, they had laid everyone else off. “Winning” was staying employed until the market picked back up after 2009. The company went out of business late 2011. I stayed until the bitter end and then did a contract with the customer that I had been working with.
The second I was already the de facto cloud architect and I “threatened” my CTO that I would quit if they ever made me a team lead. I only got that because I volunteered for the initiatives and I stuck to it until I figured out what I was doing and did a lot of research. The company only had 60 people at its height including project managers, managers, QA, analysts, sales and developers.
The current company, I’m already at the top IC level and have the highest bill rate as a US based consultant. I was bought in at that level. I’ve repeatedly asked my manager what my goals should be a s he said basically - keep making the customers happy and bringing in money through being billable.
The others I was a cog in the wheel and would have had to play the politics game to get ahead. I’ve always sucked at that.
It was very much bimodal. If you were working in BigTech or adjacent, that was definitely true. If you were working in enterprise dev like most of the 2.5 million+ developers working in a tier 2 city outside of the west coast in the US, comp was definitely stagnating.
In 2016, I knew I had to do something when my (step)son graduated in 2020 and my wife was willing to move anywhere the money took us.
It just so happened that a job fell into my lap at AWS working (full time) in the consulting department. I am no longer there. I now work at a third party consulting firm as a staff consultant specializing in app dev.
Yeah someone joining a good company as a senior engineer in 2015 would retire with about 15M in assets now assuming smart investments (say... half on big tech stocks, half in market indices)
Someone joining now on the other hand, might have to resort to physical work at some point in the next ten years of things go south.
This is very much tech bubble thinking.
Most developers in the US don’t work for tech companies and will never make ovdd $200K inflation adjusted. Developer salary is very much bimodal
https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/trimodal
If you are working for boring old enterprise companies like banks, airlines, insurance companies or even most YC funded companies, “senior” developers will top out at around $160K-$170K inflation adjusted in tier 2 cities.
I spent my pure developer career [1] in Atlanta GA. Well known companies based there like Home Depot, Delta, Coke, and GE Transportation are paying their top developers around what entry level developers getting in BigTech.
But choose your non west coast city and you will see the same.
Okay, assuming you could invest 100k out of your 170k per year into companies you know were doing well on tech from 2015, how much would you have ?
(say: AMD, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Facebook)
The answer is about 10M, which is not that far from what I estimated, even without including Nvidia. Now add in house price appreciation.
There are plenty of people who have managed to do this, from fairly normal tech jobs.
Sure, just save 100k out of your 170k comp, that's totally how normal people operate. And not only that, also pick the right stocks rather than just sticking everything in an index!
Just magically turn 10x 100k into 10M!
I haven't got to 10m yet, but I saved 70-80% of my take home pay since ~2008 and I have enough to quit at any time and live the rest of my life without working. That is just by investing in the 3-fund portfolio and without the crazy SF salaries.
No one knows you here. Give some real numbers. How much are you paying for housing? What’s your gross pay?
Numbers don't matter. If you can save 80% of your paycheck for 15-20 years and you invest it wisely, you are FI on the 4% rule.
So exactly how do you save 80% off of $175K and live off of $30K a year? Especially considering everything above your 401K max is post tax?
That’s only twice the minimum wage and even in Atlanta they are offering cashiers at McDonalds more than that.
Before Covid, I lived on about 25K a year since I had a paid off condo then. Now, I am renting and live on around 36K a year. I realize my situation doesn't work for everyone. Some people cannot fathom not buying a new phone and computer every year and a new car every 3 years.
Also, now, I am fully working from home so that helps with saving on gas and not eating out as much. I make my coffee every morning instead of Starbucks on the way to work and I make my own lunch and dinner 95% of the time.
We aren’t talking about buying a new phone. We are talking about buying a place to live and food to eat.
What is the average rent where you live for a one bedroom? What is the tech hiring seen like?
Do you have kids?
You do not understand compounding growth.
You could have looked up the numbers for indices yourself, but here you go -
S&P500 -> ~4 million
NDXT (top 100 tech) -> ~14 million.
> just save 100k out of your 170k comp
Yes, that was my starting salary, and that's almost exactly what I saved.
This calculation assumes your salary is somewhat constant and maxed out as the person I was responding to claimed, but in my experience you can expect your tech salary to double every ~5-6 years.
Your math seems way off?
NDXT went from ~2300 in 2015 to ~12500 in 2025. That's ~5.5x return. So even if you had your whole 1M saving in 2015, you'd only have 5.5M now. No idea how you get nearly 3x that?
And it's way worse if you take the actual scenario which is 100k added every year instead of starting with the 1M.
S&P500 is worse yet, at about 3.5x total return if you had the whole million at the start.
Really appreciate your comment, literally the only comment in this long sub-thread that picked up on the nonsensical numbers fooker put out.
Realistically fooker's investment strategy into NDXT of 100k over 10 years would have produced around $2.5M depending on exact timing in the year and partitioning of that 100k. Way less than $15M nonsense. Also would have required extreme conviction alike the crypto types and completely counter how typically multi-million portfolios are managed (diversified).
Also, who needs 15M, at 5M net wealth there honestly is no reason to be working at a $200k/year job. You'll make way more after-tax income even assuming lousy 5% yearly return thru capital gains. Same story for 2.5M @ 10%.
Counting on 10% returns long term is way to aggressive especially when you have to consider sequence of returns risks during withdrawals. Even 5% is not conservative enough while you are in the withdrawal phase.
If I had $5 million of investments outside of my home, would I work? Maybe? My job is far from stressful, I work from home, I “retired” my wife over 5 years ago when she was 44 eight years into our marriage so she could pursue her passions and we could travel a lot.
All of my friends still work so what could I possibly do with my free time that I don’t do now? The only restrictions that not working would lift is that we could more easily spend an extended amount of time outside of US time zones.
> Counting on 10% returns long term is way to aggressive especially when you have to consider sequence of returns risks during withdrawals
Yes though the propose is not to retire. There's better things to do with your life (IMO) than work a standard 9-5 job for some corporation once you've accumulated sufficient wealth to have financial independence.
> Even 5% is not conservative enough while you are in the withdrawal phase.
Assuming you spend 5% per year. 5M@5% is 250k, 200k+ after tax for CG + eligible divs. That's a lot of money to spend every year, more than most families get to earn thru their labor yearly. Can be secured against downturns with higher 4%+ bond allocations too. 5M is financial independence for vast majority of households. 2.5M can be as well for many if their baseline spend remains at 100k.
> All of my friends still work so what could I possibly do with my free time that I don’t do now?
Financial independence provides vast opportunities for those with ideas but lacking time. There's a reason most businesses are pursued by those who have financial wealth on their side.
I calculated saving $100K out of $170K gross some pre tax and most post tax is living off of around $1800 a month.
And again, expecting your salary to double every six or seven years is not realistic for most developers.
Most developers making around $120K in 2013, aren’t making $480K now.
$170K as a starting salary, scratch that, as any salary, is already way beyond the average SWE salary.
That’s true. I said “top out at”. When I left AWS working in the ProServe (cloud consulting division) in 2023, I was seeing “architect” positions in Atlanta - I didn’t live there any more, but most of my network was still there - topping out at $175k. But for “senior” developers it was even less.
I obviously decided to stay in consulting and work full time for a third party consulting company.
Shit, dump that $100k into bitcoin at the low point of 2015, and you'd have $37 million today. Easy!
$170K a year after taxes is $9900 a month net if you are living in GA - with fairly low state taxes. I calculated this on paycheckcity.com. That’s without taking into account health insurance cost.
So to invest $100K a year let’s say some pretax and some post tax, they would have to live off of $1700 a month. They are not going to be buying a house with that.
As far as wealth through equity in a house, that’s not liquid. What are you going to do borrow against it?
And actually I can speak for one of the best case scenarios for buying a house. I had a house built in 2016 in the most affluent county in GA for $335K - a 5 bedroom, 3.5 bath - and sold it in 2024 for $670K and moved to state taxe free Florida and bought a condo in 2022 for half the cost (we kept both for awhile)
Even then, we could only do that because my (step)kids were both grown and I pivoted to customer facing cloud consulting in 2020. A niche that hasn’t suffered from the return to office mandates - ironically enough except for AWS ProServe (former employee) and Google’s equivalent internal department (who has been trying to recruit me for years).
Most people won’t and shouldn’t be picking individual stocks. Of course it’s easy to be a genuis saying what would have happened if you picked stocks that went up.
> There are plenty of people who have managed to do this, from fairly normal tech jobs.
Yeah, but there also isn’t enough wealth in the system for everyone to do this.
Like suppose that a) we’re now at a reasonably correct valuation for Nvidia b) assume a hypothetical where everyone in the US had plowed all of their savings into Nvidia in 2015. Result: The market cap of Nvidia is still $6 trillion, and the median American owns less than $10k in Nvidia stock.
I meant everyone with a good tech job, not everyone in the country.
About a 1:1000 ratio I'd guess.
Sure, but there was nothing stopping people with $10k in savings in 2015 from buying Nvidia. If someone with $10k in savings had bought Nvidia in 2015, they’d have $2.5m today. But that only works for a relatively small number of people before the $2.5m is no longer $2.5m - they’re all drawing from the same $6 trillion pot. “Everyone with a good tech job” is accurate, but besides the point, it would work exactly the same if you limited it to “everyone who’s a plumber” or “everyone who’s a fedex driver”, but literally cannot work for everyone at the same time.
> it would work exactly the same if you limited it to “everyone who’s a plumber” or “everyone who’s a fedex driver”
Yes, "Everyone with a good tech job" has a significantly higher chance of keeping or holding tech RSUs, and have conviction that investing in tech is going to pay off.
> but literally cannot work for everyone at the same time
Yes, that is how the world works. Anything that makes you successful would not work for everyone at the same time.
> Yes, that is how the world works. Anything that makes you successful would not work for everyone at the same time.
To me this reads as a particularly misanthropic view of the world that only considers zero-sum (or less than zero sum) actions.
Any investments in yourself that aren’t at the expense of others (education, exercise, diet, therapy, living space improvements, etc., etc.) or investments in family and community, benefit both you and others and would work for everybody; indeed, many such investments would work better the more people undertook them, rather than the fewer.
Do you see the difference between
> more
and
> everyone
?
If more people bought Nvidia stocks, the value would be higher. If everyone bought, something would give (and that is exactly what we are starting to see).
If only someone knew in 2015 that Bitcoin and then AI would be a big thing and choose the one stock that was going to benefit the most from it…
170k after taxes leaves you with about 130k net, maybe 140k; if you live in a big city and have a family, it's almost impossible to save 100 grand of that 140k. More realistic you would save about 50k and still come out ok, but lets be realistic noone is saving 100k from 170k gross salary
$110K a year is more realistic after taxes and then you have housing, health insurance, car insurance, food, clothes, school expenses, etc.
You’re not realistically saving $50K a year.
In GA, after taxes your take home would be ~125k. So you think someone can live in a big city like ATL for 25k/year? What if they have a family? Ok, are you assuming their spouse is also in tech and making at least similar? The 125k also doesn't have healthcare deducted yet.
Some of the comments on this thread highlight just how disconnected many people were/are from everything outside of the FAANG bubble.
If you live in an expensive city and do not have a proportional salary, obviously you are going to save less.
> Ok, are you assuming their spouse is also in tech and making at least similar?
Yes, suppose spouse contributes to household expenses, but assume separate savings and investments for this calculation. Do you see you'd easily get to 100k saved?
The difference between having a large fraction of your savings in your bank account versus invested for the last 10 years can be quite a few millions, which is what most commenters here are failing to see. I'm sure the story was different between 2002 and 2012, but that was not what I talking about.
Ok, so you need 2 people working in tech making near top end salaries for the area? You do see how this simple idea of saving 100k/year isn't so simple for anyone outside of FAANG?
What's a realistic number in your opinion?
I managed to save about 100k per year in Denver and Salt Lake City with mid tier tech and govt lab jobs. I'm suspicious of the claim that Atlanta is significantly different. From what I have seen, it's usually bad financial decisions.
And for context, saving about double that during and post COVID by obtaining a remote job where the employer does not discriminate by location too much other than for maybe career growth.
I posted calculations. $170K a year after taxes is $9900 a month before health insurance. To save $100K a year since only some of it would be pretax means you are living off of around $1600 a month.
And while I work remotely, remote jobs are getting more scarce and more competitive. Every job gets hundreds of applications within the curse few hours.
> If you live in an expensive city and do not have a proportional salary, obviously you are going to save less.
I assure you that my hometown in South GA (a cheap city) didn’t have $170K a year developer jobs.
A friend who moved to Columbus GA after college in 1997 I doubt is making $170K now.
I know my friend who still lives in Atlanta and is a lead developer at Home Depot (one of the few F500 companies based in Atlanta) just crossed around $170K and he has been there 10 years.
I did the math by going over to PayCheckCity.com. It’s actually $118K before health insurance.
https://www.paycheckcity.com/calculator/salary/georgia/resul...
> At 51, if my only differentiator is I can code, I’ve done something horribly wrong in my life.
I think software is going through what scribes went through when education went universal.
At one point, just knowing how to read and write gave you a cushy job. It didn't matter what, maybe you were in government, maybe you were a clerk organizing trade.
Somewhere in the last 20 years, this happened with coding. At the start of the millennium, knowing how to code meant you could fill some role. Now, everybody knows enough of how to do it that it's assumed for many roles, just as reading and writing is for every office job.
> Now, everybody knows enough of how to do it that it's assumed for many roles
Is it? I don't know anyone who can code proficiently outside of people who work tech jobs (or used to).
The thing is that there are enough people who are good enough enterprise CRUD developers - especially for remote roles and/or outsourced developers - that it’s hard to stand out from the crowd or command increasingly higher salaries. Gen AI has made the problem worse.
Even if you are targeting a major tech, if you are trying to differentiate yourself by how well you can reverse a btree on the white board, there are plenty of people who can do the same. It’s not a differentiator that you have previous experience in BigTech any more. So do thousands of others.
For me, I saw it happening around 2014. I was six years out of the long fog of my “expert beginner” phase and trying to figure out what I was going to do next. I was considered a “senior” [1] full stack developer and no matter what I did - mobile, actually learn front end better, I was still going to top out at around $150K (and sadly enough, that is still what I’m seeing in Atlanta when I lurk on LinkedIn).
I knew I had to get into BigTech or adjacent after my son graduated as a software engineer.
Around 2016 I belatedly discovered cloud consulting where consultants would come in and “transform” organizations. I learned in hindsight that they were a bunch of old school net ops folks who only knew how to do bad lift and shifts that costs the company more money and treated AWS like a Colo.
I wanted to do the same but focus on what I learned the term for years later was “modernization”. Bringing in a software developers mindset on cloud consulting. By 2020, I was no longer thinking about BigTech and was focused on getting into consulting. I had never heard of AWS’s Professional Services department until a recruiter told me about it. Even then I didn’t know it was full time working for AWS directly until that was also explained to me.
[1] yes in hindsight I know that a title of “senior” to someone who pulls well defined tickets off a Jira board is laughable.
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Your competition isn’t new grads. It’s experienced engineers in other countries who will work for half your wage in your own city on an H1B or similar.
You're half correct. H1Bs in your own city aren't working half your wage.
However, engineers in developing countries will work half your wage, remote from their home, where that's a great salary where they live. When the average annual salary in India is the equivalent of $4,200 USD/year, there are a lot of talented engineers there that if they don't win the H1B lottery, will end up working for big tech remote.
You're mistaken thinking those engineers aren't facing the same market downturn. AFAICT, it's exactly the same in Europe. The only difference is that in Europe folks weren't paid exorbitant salaries like their US colleagues were.
H1Bs don’t work for “half your wage”. This is a myth. H1Bs have a higher average salary.
>Reality is not particularly rosy for new graduates AFAIK
I looked at the statistics[1], and while you could argue new graduates have seen worse (recent grad unemployment is actually lower than much of the 2010s), you can also see that in contrast to previous periods where new grad unemployment is lower than all worker unemployment, this time around new grad unemployment is actually slightly higher. However if you look at the chart this wasn't a post pandemic phenomena. The gap has been closing since the back half of the 2010s, and doesn't show much of a spike after the release of chatgpt, so "AI" isn't a good explanation either.
[1] https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market
Break it down by degree. You're losing some important information in the aggregate. Going to degree you see that Computer Science has the 7th highest unemployment rate: anthropology, physics, computer engineering, commercial art & graphical design, fine art, sociology, computer science, chemistry, information systems & management.
Of course you also need to look at underemployment too. Which CS is on the lower end of that. So you have to consider things like that even though there's a higher unemployment rate than performing arts (2x) there is far lower underemployment because people expect to get jobs in their field for CS.
There's more you need to look at too. It's not so easy and you shouldn't just use such a high level approximation if you want to make sense of the data.
Hiring lab has some more interesting information to like the number of postings. CS is way down from "prepandemic" levels, but unfortunately only goes to 2020 (hence the quotes).
https://data.indeed.com/#/
There's a recent podcast that talked about this if you have 15 minutes to watch a segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYRCYdxVMaM
TL;DR Gen Z is "slightly better off" in pure financial status compared to older generations , even with inflation adjusted. But the distribution on what got cheaper overtime and what got more expensive is causing the true strain among Gen Z.
It also helps to explain a bit of a generation clash when you see how older generations can chastise the younger ones over what were "luxuriies" when they were that age. The entire market is flipped.
> why are companies going to hire me, who have gap years and are older, but not some fresh graduates who can work 80 hours per week and only demand half of the salary?
Given cost of living, I have a hard time believing young people come out being cheaper. I live in an area with cheap rents and my mortgage is still less than the average price of a one-bedroom apartment in the area. My cars are new and paid off, and I have pretty much all of the stuff I'd ever need in my life. Plus, no student loans.
That might be one of the real root causes of the job market for new grads being shit. The amount of money people need to meet their basic needs has skyrocketed, and young people bear the brunt of the burden. The only people who can readily afford to work too cheap are those with parents who can continue to support them to a degree.
“The rest of my life” is a very long horizon for making predictions. I don’t think I could predict much about politics or the economy two years out.
At least in the US we haven't had official data for quite some time. The BLS lost its chief because of "bad numbers"
The numbers we do have show significantly worse jobs numbers compared to prior years.
We might get data again, maybe not, but the US government has had an internal revolution, and it's doubtful we will have data as good as in the past, and it's quite likely that any bad news will be deeply buried.
BTC would agree with you. It’s nose diving.
Since its a Sunday night during a holiday weekend without any big breaking news, I would suspect that's probably just a bunch of people that had automated sales at $90k, or something similar.
A common pattern is: people (I supposed I mean: investors) are somewhat worried that markets are over valued. They ponder, think, research, binge-watch Prof G videos... Then they travel to have Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of in-laws. Market gets discussed over cigars. If they get a confirmation signal from the brother in law attorney or sister in law dentist that they are worried too...then after mulling it over on the flight back to Denver...the market dumps on Monday.
Love that HODL optimism. Looking at the longer charts there seems to be support around $80k so maybe. This could just be holiday shopping. The timing of economics with this though has me worried the support will falter causing a sell off and Monday’s bell will be a bloodbath.
For a look at the shopping economics, this year's bfcm at stripe is pretty fun! http://bfcm.stripe.com people are selling off Bitcoin to have money to buy stuff, and that link is an inside baseball look at how much stuff is being bought.
I have zero optimism for BTC, hold zero, and can't imagine a circumstance where I'd ever buy some. (Though perhaps a few more years of current US policy and USD will be so terrible that BTC starts to be more attractive...)
I see that Tokyo stock markets are way down today, that's probably what's driving lower BTC?
I believe you’re in the minority here. Perhaps your experience is different because of your skill set or the market you’re in. Anyone that I know personally who got laid off (in tech) took at least 6 months to find a job. I don’t know about anyone else but that to me is pretty brutal. More so as the people getting laid off are mid career, some with kids.
Edit: Add to the above that companies like Walmart are seeing an uptick in high wage earners becoming their customers, and McDonalds seeing a shrinking population of low-wage customers.
It’s easy to infer the rest from there. People who used to do well are cutting expenses and those who were already struggling are..I seriously don’t know what they’re doing. Where do you eat when you downgrade from McDonalds..Wendy’s? It’s a sad state of affairs.
Source: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-11-16/mcdonalds-...
You ask, "Where do you eat when you downgrade from McDonalds..Wendy’s? It’s a sad state of affairs." On the off chance that this isn't a joke, you need to know that eating out is very expensive in the US, even at McDonald's. According to the obviously highly credible https://mcdonalds-menu-prices.us/ a Quarter Pounder With Cheese costs US$7.99 now. I think home-cooked rice and lentils costs about US$0.20. Other similarly low-cost foods include polenta, homemade bread, homemade mayonnaise, zucchini, spaghetti, sunflower-seed cheese, homemade peanut butter, onions, potatoes, etc. Those numbers aren't even the same order of magnitude.
> Where do you eat when you downgrade from McDonalds?
You buy groceries. And if you must downgrade from there you eat the rich.
the advantage of fast-food over groceries, is that you don't have to worry about spoilage and waste. So the delta is probably less than you think. Now granted McD is an s-show, they are no longer the restaurant of the poor, You likely can get a better burger meal deal at a Chilis than a McD, as sad as that is.
Even if you waste half your groceries its still cheaper than eating out. And wasting that much is difficult to do, most staples will last weeks to years without risk of spoilage.
There are some fresh fruits and vegetables that are exceptions because they dont take well to refrigeration or freezing but really not much.
also, there is the case of the mismatched quantities for shopping, ie, the old hot dogs come in 10 packs, and rolls in 8 backs, etc.
Good grief .. you're serious?
Flour comes in sacks, meat comes in cuts - we've a quarter lamb in the freezer, part of that in the fridge, and yeast and flour enough for bread for the next six months.
We shop cheap, like the family has done for the past 100+ years, much of our food comes from the garden - our excess gets swapped with others excess (we have a lot of fruit, we never buy eggs, they come from people that can be bothered to run chickens).
It's a bit of work, we save money by not going to a gym and our life expectancy and cancer survival rates are much better than, say, middle north America.
To cut mbfg a bit of slack here, your approach doesn't work in all situations. I admire your functioning community and supportive family and the fact that you've got time and space for things like gardening.
If people can't live like you do, it's probably because they've been placed on some kind of economic hamster wheel, and rather than figure out how to get a quarter of a lamb their better bet is to emigrate or to disrupt the system that's making McDonalds feel like a relevant factor in a survival equation by building the kind of community that you're describing. That's a big ask if you've never been part of such a thing (I know I haven't).
Sure, we live in an isolated area and have evolved through years of not even having a shop (well, I got to see one finally ~ 1980 or so). My father as young pre-teen helped support three younger siblings and a mother while his father was away at war by trapping rabbits and all that.
I had eighteen months as an isolated single parent with near zero support (long story) and had to stretch a marginal budget during that period. I've also travelled through the more remote parts of more than half of the 190+ countries across the planet, sorting logistics for food, fuel, et al along the way.
What I can pass on as hard earned lessons are that fast foods are rarely the cheapest or heathiest in the long term - if you can track down a large volume slow cooker in any garage sale or op shop on special you can keep a never ending stew on the roll by throwing in damn near anything, potatoes, celery, beans, carrots, bits of meat, swedes, etc.
It's hard to disrupt a system, difficult to break patterns and build communities and establish areas to grow food - but home cooking and stretching out food is something that can be found across the planet in the most unlikely places. Worth the effort to look for examples and make a few moves.
We're lucky to buy and prep all our food in bulk - it's more expensive on the infrequent shopping days, it's substantially cheaper over the course of year.
It's not something we need to do in current circumstances, it's a habit kept up in case it's ever needed and being frugal where possible means more to spend elsewhere.
This is just wrong. Beans and rice are more than an order of magnitude cheaper than McDonald's per calorie and they're non-perishable. Combine that with whatever fruit and veg is affordable fresh or frozen, a bit of cheap seasoning, and you're still coming out ahead.
You obviously need access to cooking and storage facilities to eat like this, but the target audience of McDonald's is the time-poor, the resource-constrained, or the depressed and disabled, rather than just the money-poor.
McDonald’s is expensive. Much cheaper to cook yourself.
Situational.
IMO, I think it breaks even, but eating out saves a lot of time! Healthier cooking at home? Yes. I studied this for myself (N=1), and my cooking is about US$10/meal give or take (asparagus, chicken, rice, water to drink). If you cook for two or more people, then I think cooking at home comes out ahead financially.
What hourly wage are you imputing to your cooking to get US$10 for a meal of asparagus, chicken, and rice? My estimate for the materials would be:
- 250g raw chicken wings: $375 ≈ 30¢ (I bought these on Saturday, so this is the current price)
- 200g asparagus: $1500 ≈ US$1 (this is a rough guess because I never buy it and the greengrocer doesn't have a web site)
- 100g dry long-grain rice: $100 ≈ 7¢ (just checked the price online, and I think this is rather high)
- water to drink and cook the rice is unmetered here
Total: US$1.37. But you could easily get it down to less than half that with a different vegetable. Salts, spices, and oils might add a few pennies.
Possibly if you are at McMurdo Base or something your ingredient prices might be unusual.
>cooking is about US$10/meal give or take (asparagus, chicken, rice, water to drink).
You must be eating an absolute TON to eat $10 worth of chicken, asparagus, and rice. I just checked the prices at Target and rice is $1.89 for 2 pounds, chicken thighs are $1.69 a pound. Asparagus is spendier at $5 for 1 pound.
How many pounds of chicken and asparagus are you eating? Even if you ate two pounds of chicken and the entire pound of asparagus you aren't hitting $10.
10/meal is very expensive, fyi. A rotisserie costco chicken is $5 for reference; rice and beans is essentially free. Cabbage nearly so.
...and add the time for preparation, cleaning up etc.: Thats one of the most frustrating things when cooking for one person - you invest 45min to eat 5min and the rest is "organisation & logistics"
45 minutes is crazy. I have a chicken and rice dish I can make in 20 minutes (yes, I've timed myself because I'm weirdo and enjoy those chef shows). It takes 20 minutes because that's how long the rice takes. It can be faster if I use shrimp instead of chicken (more expensive though) and noodles instead of rice. It also makes ~3 servings.
Wow, i got downvoted for complaining about my cooking times on HackerNews, this is a real innovation:
so: - 5 min walk to supermarket - 10 min in there - 5 min walk back home - washing & cutting wedgetables 7 - 10 min - maybe cutting some meat: 5 min on top - eating 5 - 10 min - cleaning up the kitchen 5 min
Haha...I didn't downvote you, but 45 minutes to cook seemed crazy to me unless you're making something new or complicated or you're socializing. You also kept eating separate from cooking in your first post.
I don't count the walk to the supermarket since even if you eat out almost every meal, you still tend to need to go to the grocery for items either way. And if you eat out, you still have to go there and back.
Cutting should be in parallel with cooking. Similar to cutting, cleaning should also be in parallel with cooking. For example, my knife and cutting board are washed, dried and put away before my sauce finishes simmering down.
That's why when it's just me I don't really do much cooking. I'll eat ultra-low prep stuff like toast (w/beans, hummus or avocado), bagged salad, frozen food, or grilled tofu.
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I believe the long-term average in the US and UK was somewhere around 20 - 25 weeks so that's still broadly in line. Not trying to dismiss anyone but there is a cacophony of voices about the difficulty in finding jobs but hard to ascertain if that is any different from normal or we just got used to a boom cycle (ex Covid) and that's causing the disconnect?
Some anecdata from Belgium: the software market is dead. Hardly anyone is hiring. Rates have plummetted. There are (virtually) no startups. Big corpos are hiring in Southern and Eastern Europe instead, when they're not outsourcing to India.
Unlike some of the US commenters, our high tax rates and lack of stock-options driven reward schemes means that most of us don't have enough money in the bank to casually found a startup.
> Unlike some of the US commenters, our high tax rates and lack of stock-options driven reward schemes means that most of us don't have enough money in the bank to casually found a startup.
That's because it effectively is gambling. Maybe if you are one of the first 50 employees in a startup that is one of 100 to reach "unicorn" stage, you have the chance to strike it big... but then you are 0.01% of all employees of startups.
The 99.99%? They'll have had their company fold or let them go due to the company "pivoting" or "having to look better in quarterly reports", they'll have left voluntarily for one reason or the other, or they'll have been let go right before the vesting period to save the company money and end up with nothing vested, or the company will have gone to three, four, five or more rounds of funding watering down existing options, or the company will have gone bust... all while having traded the "chance" of striking it big for lower pay, thus reducing payments into our tax, social security and healthcare systems.
Europe does not like gambling with the lives of its citizens and the stability of our systems.
I've been lead to believe that, in lieu of startup founding cash in the bank, there's a better social safety net, for use in cases like these. Is that not the case?
There is a pretty good social safety net, at least in Belgium. Though its funding is under pressure due to high spending and taxes being pretty much maxed out already. And while I could probably start a company and be reasonably sure that I won't go homeless if it fails, by virtue of that social safety net. The social safety net doesn't give me the cash to hire my first couple of engineers.
This is a bit of a caricature of course. Banks exist. Startup accelerators exist. There are places and ways to get funding. But doing it with your own savings is virtually unheard of over here.
I've been unemployed for quite some time as a software developer with 13 years of experience.
The unemployment agency of my country tries to help, but the reality is that the amount of new jobs every week is staggeringly low since end-2024. The agent on my case was herself honest about the prospects. It's even worse for younger developers or very old folk.
I tuned into my old freelance network in Germany and the account manager told me they're seeing 60–70% less freelance work in tech.
I could get a job in the odd thing here and there, so I'm not immensely worried yet, plus it allows me to stay home and raise our baby. But I think everyone around me is worried, even outside tech.
I live in Finland, with over 10% unemployment according to official statistics (second highest in EU, just after Spain). From what I can tell, things really suck especially for fresh grads. There's fierce competition for jobs like cashier at supermarket, hundreds of applications for one position is normal. Lots of fresh grads with bachelor's or master's degree compete for those jobs too, since they can't find anything better. Also, of the few open positions, many are the kind of "rental work" that offer only limited hours a week, at unpredictable times.
So, this is what an objectively bad job market looks like in Europe.
Is having temporarily high unemployment that bad? Sure, demand is not as sky high as it used to be but doesn't mean people won't get a proper job eventually.
Imo it shows that you consider your people valuable and have a strong social safety net, so people are not forced to accept the first job that comes their way and compromise on pay or what you want to do.
I'm sure those grads could get underpaid crappy jobs the next day if they had to, but the point is they're not forced to.
If you can't sort this out in a couple years, then you have a real problem.
> If you can't sort this out in a couple years, then you have a real problem.
The problem is, we've been in an era of the polycrisis for decades - first 2007 the financial crisis thanks to the US subprime loan market, then the Euro crisis, then came the refugee crisis 2015, then the second refugee crisis 2018, then Covid, then the Russian invasion, then the Israel-Palestine war, and now Trump.
And the last three and a half crises are still going on simultaneously.
There has been no recovery period in which things could settle and those who got left behind could catch up, it was straight from one crisis to the next.
>out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along.
The Titanic had 3 days of warning and took 3 hours to sink. A large ship takes a long time to do anything, be it turn or drown.
If you've been following the breadcrumbs in pretty much any industry (especially tech), you know the market isn't in a good shape. If you're looking outside expencting to see the world burning, you gotta wait another 3 hours (or hope someone steps in first).
I know 4 people who were laid off this year. 2 federal government (1 contractor) and 2 large corporate. Entirely anecdotal, but the data I see isn't good.
The commenter you’re replying to is from Australia and things are likely different here
The downturn of the economy, as a whole, is very real while simultaneously we are doing "just fine".
The "just fine" part is that our stock market is doing quite well, and those who are already wealthy greatly increased the velocity of their wealth. The flip side is that everything is too expensive, including labor, and we have to cut corners to make line go up. Most companies, by this point, have been more or less stripped for parts in pursuit of growth. Most are stagnating or experiencing negative growth now, because obviously, except a key few.
And those key few are pretty much holding everything together. Speculatively. Based off of the promise of growth without labor.
So, that's kind of where we're at right now.
> but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along. Not great guns but still ok. The interesting thing is how much is internet chatter a leading signal for this thing now than in previous cycles?
It's really interesting to read both this comment and the featured article because my recollection is that one of the big reasons Harris lost in 2024 is that Democrats kept saying the underlying economic data was fine but voters felt things were bad, even if they weren't (the so-called 'vibecession'). Maybe also a bit of distrusting economic experts. So which is it? Are voters just being illogical and should trust when others say the economy is doing fine? Or is there something not being captured in economic data that validates people's concerns?
IMO the shift towards AI was very detrimental to the job market, because every company started to work on their AI strategy and not on their core competencies. This has resulted in most companies failing to materialize their AI strategies, while burning their cash. One of the reasons for this is that the average company competes against Goliaths that have infinite funding.
At first many companies stopped developing mobile apps and I think mobile app devs were the first hit. Second, the frontend developers were hit because of how the AI can generate good enough websites, however, they aren't hit as hard as the mobile developers.
This has spread into most parts of the stack with a variable impact.
Some anecdata from Berlin:
- It's now much harder to get a job without speaking German
- There is now competition for low-wage service jobs
- At times it felt like half of my friends were unemployed
- My dev friends have a much harder time finding work. Back in 2015-2020 I had to beat recruiters back with a stick.
Agree on all points, especially half of my friend circle being unemployed at one point.
Folks with amazing jobs having to spend >1y trying to find a "meh" job. Pretty much impossible to find a job without fluent German.
My dev friends could find English speaking jobs but everyone else is struggling. Some are moving away, compromising, or nervously watching the end date of their unemployment insurance. The salaries actually went down since last year if I'm not mistaken.
>...but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along.
I don't know that the official data shows things "still bobbing along." The graph of monthly employment numbers looks like it has a decidedly downward trend overall. September jobs were unexpectedly high, but we've had a lot of subsequent downward revisions and it may happen again for September.
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2025/11/2...
looks like a return to post GFC pre-covid trend. That's sort of what I mean, we've obviously come from a boom-ish market and correcting. How much of it now is the shock that now isnt the same as the 2021-2023 market v this is the start of a real downturn. I don't know
Don't be fooled by the scaling due to the covid spike, 2025 looks quite a bit worse than pre-covid. It looks more like pre-2008.
> we've never had, to my knowledge, a notable downturn when social media, and all the chatter it generates, has been so prominent or mass engaged
How would we even know? It's not like there's a practical way to measure this from an individual's perspective.
I find that social media just trends more negative generally. People engage with the negative.
Jobless are probably a vocal minority.
Nothing paints a picture of recession in reality right now.
Well for one, the concept of a recession is entirely unrelated to employment rates
Clearly: You are not in one of the major EU-countries :-)
Tech is more affected than the rest which is over-represented in discussions. Also people who can’t find a job tend to be more vocal than the rest.
Based on the numbers we had before the BLS clammed up, all sectors except healthcare is going down. But yes, tech is one of the bigger slumps. If your job isn't to help take care of the aging boomer population, you're not having a good time.
I work in games and have the occasional slump. But this time is much different. all staffind agencies for temp work in my city pretty much said there's nothing out there. my local area is pretty much a bunch of fractional janitorial roles and that's it.
Are they perhaps more vocal because they have a lot of time on their hands?
You mean spending all their time looking for a new job, applying for various benefits, doing side work as much as they can, at pay far lower than they're used to so it takes more hours of gig work to reach equilibrium?
> ... at pay far lower than they're used to ...
Is this saying something more about the relative expectation of compensation bands?
New grads are unlikely to have a comparable benchmark.
People who've worked in Big Tech and finding themselves applying to regular companies where the revenue per employee is in the $200k range are likely going to have difficulty adjusting to such.
I work in the public sector and make very low six digits. Others I know have compensation that is 3x or 4x what I make while working in technology industries.
If both I and the people I chat with were to find themselves suddenly out of a job, I suspect I'd find an acceptable job elsewhere more easily than they would because anything I did would be a pay raise while anything they took would be a pay cut. This in turn translates to that I would be the less risky candidate (that I wouldn't be looking for a new position that would pay more within the year)... and thus I believe not only would I be more likely to accept the job I would also be more likely to be extended the position.
Browsing reddit there are a lot of people on cscareerquestions (and similar) who have the mindset of FAANG or bust as a new grad. That they wouldn't even consider working at a company like Little Cesar's or Home Depot despite those companies having open positions.
---
Furthermore, this gets into a lemon market situation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons ). Where it becomes harder to distinguish a good candidate for a poor one and that can only be found out after someone is hired, the companies that have people are more afraid of hiring a lemon than so don't hire anyone. This further depresses the market for the highly skilled candidates. Additionally, people who are skilled are less likely to look for a new job because the market is depressed and they're not as likely to get a good position afterwards.
> Is this saying something more about the relative expectation of compensation bands?
I just want to survive and I can do barely that. If you want a reference: I'm a single male who went from 160k salary to nothing in the last half of 2023. My necessary expenses were 3k a month (70% of that being rent).
Since then I lived in 2024 off of 50/hr freelance @ 15 hours a week. or... 3000/month. You see the issue here. Savings got obliterated, credit built up. But I figured I'd pay it off quickly if I just got any job to supplement the freelance work. not a 160k job per se. I could have found some local 60k IT role and been just fine (if a bit overworked with two different jobs).
In 2025, after a year of circuses in the job market I settled on a 20/hr 20 hour role to supplement the freelance work. So things are "stable" now... as long as I don't get sick, or the car doesn't break down, or a variety of other life factors (spoilers: I did in fact get sick. Which lead to me finding the 2nd part time work).
Like I said, I just want to survive. As is, I'm working for a third or so of my old salary with zero benefits and much more stress.
I understand how that goes. In 2009 I lost my job making $85k (it would now be $130k in 2025 dollars)... and I was unemployed for a little under a year. I got a job where I made $25 an hour (40h a week with time and a half overtime) as a software developer (in a city where the median per capita income was $36k/year - and yes, I verified that with the federal reserve stats - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/categories/3008 ). In 2015, with no meaningful raises and a bit of burnout I got a job in the public sector for $80k and have since been promoted and am making a little bit over $100k (different city, median per capita income is $75k/year).
Salary-wise, I'm making less than I did when I lived in California in '09 (and that's salary - stocks were a nice bit more and public sector doesn't exactly have an ESPP).
It may be necessary to move to get a job that pays $80k a year with 100% in the office expectations. Yes, it sucks. It's hard. Finding a job in '09 was not fun and I expect that similar conditions are to be found today. However, there are jobs out there when one considers what would be D tier companies and presents themself as someone isn't going to leave in a year for a higher salary somewhere else (before the implicit ROI of onboarding has been paid off). With the prevalence of job hopping and the "this resume does not match the applicant" issues, companies have become very risk adverse.
This is the comment chain to which I was responding:
csomar: Also people who can’t find a job tend to be more vocal than the rest.
fragmede: Are they perhaps more vocal because they have *a lot of time on their hands?* (emphasis mine)
me: You mean spending all their time looking for a new job, applying for various benefits, doing side work as much as they can, at pay far lower than they're used to so it takes more hours of gig work to reach equilibrium?
--
So, what I was responding to was the implication that unemployed or under-employed means that you've got a whole lot of free time, which can absolutely, positively be the opposite of true.
If one had a job that previously made end's meet and now all they've got is gig work, they're probably filling ALL of their time just to survive, and are probably still coming up short. That's what I meant.
Actually having trouble finding candidates...
What are you looking for?
DevOps
There are several factors which contribute to the "rosy" official picture:
- A lot of people participate in the gig economy instead of getting registered as unemployed.
- AI has eroded a lot of employment opportunities for graduates, i.e. people relatively active on social networks.
- Official data can be horribly inaccurate (phone surveys in 2025, seriously?) with grossly outdated models (remember the recent huge revisions?). Political pressure does not help here either.
- The unemployment stats do not account for significant downgrades in salary and working conditions. They will show the same picture for a person with a cushy office job and the same person working 2 jobs in retail from paycheck-to-paycheck.
Think it's a filter effect. The areas getting hit especially hard happen to overlap strongly with the most online, which is a relatively small part of the economy overall - and, if you get cut, you've got a bunch more time to to talk about it, which amplifies things further.
Plenty of other areas doing OK for now - construction, healthcare especially - there's no shortage of money around, it's just not going into tech projects outside of the AI bubble.
From my experience, it's grim at the moment for software developer jobs. I got laid off in August and it's been rough. I'm in my early 30s so I can't compare it to 2008, but I've been laid off before and I've never seen it this bad.
It's grim everywhere, for everything, all at once. I haven't been able to find work as a graphic designer, motion designer, web designer, web developer, software developer, and a large variety of retail jobs. Been on the job hunt since May, all I've been able to find is a part time position at The Home Depot.
I gotta tell you man, if you can find someone in charge at the backend of the Home Depot and let them hire you as a systems uptime troubleshooter you would easily make any salary you could name for them tenfold.
I at at a Home Depot like 10 times a week and let me tell you, they have a major systems problem that is making their operations look like a joke
Funny you mention, I'm actually working on that, too. There's an internal career portal with a large variety of backend jobs. No interviews, follow-ups, or anything yet.
Home Depot is a chain, so the backend is probably being handled from some R&D center somewhere. Your maneuvering area at the local home depot is probably pretty slim.
Back in the early 2000's I did consulting work with Home Depot's backend developers. Their office is the "store support center", which is in the NW suburbs of Atlanta. I remember the team as being very good, but surprisingly small.
These things tend to corellate :)
I've worked with a vendor listing products in their IDM (Item Data Management) System. IIRC, it's from https://www.stibosystems.com/ . From a SMB vendor supplying one type of product it's frustrating to work with, with a lot of back and forth and workflows for verifying all manner of compliance with data quality, global regulations, and laws. From their internal perspective, it's probably the bee's knees, supporting a wide variety of taxonomies, considering the variety of products they sell & support, some rather dangerous and hazardous.
From looking over the shoulders of the staff, some aspects of the system that I've seen as a supplier are directly visible to them too.
I worked for Home Depot's Canadian division up until last year when they laid me off. They do everything in-house out of Atlanta for US operations.
>you would easily make any salary you could name for them tenfold.
>I at at a Home Depot like 10 times a week
And yet you still go to Home Depot, so from their perspective it's not an existential issue. Probably the biggest thing companies have learned recently is that they don't need 99.99% uptime, people will accept degraded performance because "that's just how technology works".
I am at 10 different supply stores too, Lowes, Ashby, Truitt and I get a shit ton of stuff delivered.
Everyone competes on price, so when I see everyone at Home Depot with their thumbs up their asses because the computers are down, I know that Ashby is eating their lunch on the margin. I'm sure Home Depot has enormous economies of scale that make up for it, but this is a current issue.
I don't think that's an appropriate conclusion to draw from a single point of data.
I think it's still a mostly correct conclusion. Pretty much everywhere you look across services, they've been cooked to their bones. Have you noticed that supermarkets seem to have, like, 1/5th the employees they did before? Since when is 1 open lane on a Saturday night and a 30 minute wait acceptable?
Well, since we've accepted it. Everything kind of sucks and barely works, but it doesn't matter, because we ultimately put up with it.
~~~Problems on purpose because they don't spend the time to fix it IE not going to hire anyone to fix shit because they still make billions this broken way~~~~
I wonder if it has anything to do with all of the 10-200% taxes we've levied on random things.
By "200% tax" surely you're talking about the fact that my boss just paid (as he was compelled by law to) a licensed plumber a 3-digit sum to tee the coffee machine into the water line for the fridge ice maker...
Offshoring (India + LATAM) with a side of h1b.
Offshoring is by far the biggest culprit. Plenty of Jr/Mid roles hiring…but not US based.
Offshoring has been a thing for decades. Seriously, Yourdon wrote a doom-and-gloom book about it in the 90s. It was called “Decline and Fall of the American Programmer,” published 1992.
Then in 1996, he wrote “Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer.”
The software industry is extremely fad-driven. During the pandemic, the fad was to hire programmers. That created a lot of busywork and coordination jobs that didn’t contribute to the bottom line.
Then Musk bought Twitter, laid off a bunch of folks, and things kept running. So the trend became “cut the fat.” In fairness, there actually was fat to cut.
Now boards are in cost-cutting mode and fantasizing about AI, so the pendulum has swung back towards offshoring. But that cost-cutting focus is going to lead to stagnation and self-cannibalization. Somebody’s going to buck the trend, have a splashy success, and the herd will trample back in the other direction.
>But that cost-cutting focus is going to lead to stagnation and self-cannibalization. Somebody’s going to buck the trend, have a splashy success, and the herd will trample back in the other direction.
Yes. But sadly, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
And I feel there's going to be a huge storm to survive first. I imagine many may not even make it to the next shift.
It’s been a thing, but Covid and remote work took away any possible argument to no offshore everything ASAP.
> Then Musk bought Twitter, laid off a bunch of folks, and things kept running.
I'm not sure you can give credit to Musk here. Buying a company and cutting all R&D to "juice" profits isn't his invention. Twitter is really around still in spite of his efforts as opposed to because of them; other CEOs might be doing layoffs but they're also not going out doing sieg heils. As well as he really fired them for fealty reasons and not economic ones.
It should be very telling that Grok came out of X.ai and not X. Ultimately, Musk did have to reverse some of the layoffs although with a bit of slight of hand so that Twitter could release any sort of new products.
It's not "his" thing, but he and a few early layoffs certainly made it trendy to do so. It's a small club, so seeing any "members" take any action is a sign they should follow suit.
As always, free markets are a chaotic system of creative destruction.
Offshoring affects the pipeline. That means once people leave the workforce or get promoted there are no locals who’ve the acumen to take over as those roles are overseas. Now you have to hire them H1Bs because you don’t have locals with the requisite experience. Of course managers wonder why there aren’t Americans with experience to fill those roles …
I don't know if it's as bad, but it's bad in Canada and Germany too. The whole world is doing pretty bad, it seems.
This started before the tariffs, so no direct link. Interest rates are more to blame.
Construction, trades, and basically physical-world stuff that AI cannot do are still hiring.
People will roll out the trades whenever employment is mentioned, but do you have tradies in your family? Do you have friends who are tradies? It's not easy to get in, it takes a long time to make journeyman, and work can have seriously spotty periods no matter who you are. Fact of the matter is, it's not really an alternative to anything except other types of bluecollar work.
It's easy to get a foot in the door to any of the trades but you're gonna slog out 5+yr of doing "bitch work" before you even have a chance to make real money because that's the nature of the licensing systems that these trades have that are enshrined by various degrees of law.
About the same amount of time most people spend in college and at least you're making a little money.
Like anything, it's important to spend time networking and building a reputation for doing high quality work. This gets noticed as it does in any job and will get you better opportunities and better customers.
Trades have a higher percentage of people at the bottom tiers who have trouble showing up for work on time and sober. Avoid being associated with that and you can rise fairly quickly.
The problem is, for construction, trades and what remains of agriculture the competition is brutal. It's a low-skill job in terms of prior required education which means there is a looooot of people without degrees flooding into that market already, and then comes immigration that's further driving the wages down because (again) it's work that doesn't require much education or language skills.
I've done a stint in construction (I think y'all call it "civil engineering", aka digging trenches and moving soil) myself, it was rare to find Germans - most of my colleagues came from Eastern Europe.
Construction, trades e. t. c. will have not many customers with other professions facing unemployment so it's not a safe bet either.
Believe it or not, I've been in construction/remodeling for 35 years. We currently have 3 home remodels going on at the moment with more down the road. I've never experienced a slow down. Even during COVID.
I'm not your typical HN member I don't think. I've been a computer nerd since I was 14 years old. I come here to stimulate my inner nerd.
> I've never experienced a slow down
You didn’t experience a slowdown at the height of the recession circa 2008?
being in construction for 35 years must mean they're already in the place that does the layoffs (instead of being laid off) by the time things get bad. You can easily say things don't slow down when you're divorced from the increasingly strained workers with less hours and benefits doing the construction.
Homeowners are often rich and older and isolated from recessions.
Nope. Things still break and need repaired no matter how the housing market is.
Seconding this, I work as a SWE for a large construction company, while the IT department is small considering the large scope of the company as a whole, but we’ve been extremely busy. Construction is absolutely booming.
How did you get into construction/remodeling, and how would someone best reach out to this community? I have been thinking about some construction related ideas (mostly around prefab automation and sales) and haven't the slightest idea how to reach these types of people.
I am always curious about people who are strongly oriented towards one thing (computing) but somehow wind up in another area, such as construction.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I worked part time for my neighbor who was a master electrician. I learned the basics with him. My parents divorced when I was 17 and we were forced to move away. My mother was an assistant manager at the apartments we lived at. I turned 18 and just so happened the complex she worked at was hiring someone to do make readies, (painting and repairs on vacant units before new move-ins).
The management company my mother and I worked for sent me to various classes over the next several years (electrical, plumbing, HVAC and pool maintenance) and my supervisor was an old HVAC tech. I learned a ton from him. By the time I was 22 or so, I was promoted to maintenance director.
I got bored with apartments and wanted more. I started doing side work and met a lady that owned lots of rental property. That opened doors and she introduced me to other investors. Eventually, I was able to leave the apartment industry and do my own thing. It just kind of blew up from there.
As far as your construction related ideas, just put yourself out there. Meet people in the industry. Go to local industry related events. See if the city you live in has real estate investor clubs. DFW has a few and it's a great opportunity to meet people. This is also a great way to pick up work. Rent houses are always needing things repaired or replaced.
I know Mueller metal buildings is always looking for sales people. They were even looking for an IT person not too long ago too. In the rural area of Texas I'm in, we finish out lots of them and seem to becoming more and more popular in recent years.
Yea! Start over my career, work way longer and harder hours, and make 1/3 of what I currently do! Sounds great!
I'd posit a potential reason that these fields are currently hiring is a combination of that it destroys your body without recourse and many of these positions require certifications that take a long time to achieve (either through apprenticeships or training programs). You will also generally not get any kind of meaningful benefits from these jobs, and your body will disintigreate before your very eyes as you work yourself to bone for a pittance. The compensation for these roles is poor in comparison to white collar work despite the perceived demand for them, there is no safety net in many cases (401k, pension, reasonable health insurance, etc. outside of union shops, which are rare outside of say welders and pipefitters (and getting rarer every day!)).
And frankly the work is miserable. I've crawled through suspended ductwork to run conduit and wiring in antifreeze recycling plants that were filled with god-knows-what reagents covering everything in dust thick enough to paint a clown. PPE be damned, my skin burned for days. It was hot, loud, cramped, wet with chemicals, uncomfortable, dangerous, and unpleasant. These jobsites are the bread and butter of blue collar anything; awful and dangerous conditions outside of your control, but required by your contract because not doing it means not getting paid.
Sure, an agent isn't going to be replacing the poor bastard who has to do that, but is our only response the the deliberate and systematic murder of the white collar job market "you can suffer for less money so you'll be fine"? That's a pathetic whimpering way to just accept the very loud and public murder of class mobility.
> there is no safety net in many cases (401k, pension, reasonable health insurance, etc. outside of union shops
Residential construction is the absolute bottom of the barrel. It is trades equivalent of webdev monkeys flinging javascript poo at the web. You get benefits by not sucking and getting out of residential and into something else.
I became a USPS mail carrier instead.
Certainly less pay but I love being outside and walking.
And no Jira, changing the color of that button, or steeping myself in Frank’s eldritch horror code.
>No Jira
If I was trying to attract intelligent applicants looking for work outside of software engineering, that would be in the headline.
Genuinely curious: How else would you coordinate a large software project? We have 7 teams of 5 working on the same platform and Jira is fine for what we're doing, but I've been at this almost two decades and I haven't used any of the alternatives.
How did they develop code before Jira?
Besides like trello asana redmine or the millions of less-complicated competitors? You literally have developers work on their own modules directly from the spec or work directly with the product owner. You track their work by looking at their commits. You check their progress by looking at how the preview build / staging looks. No overhead of having developers flesh out an entire issue/story (plus sub-issues) and then move it column-to-column across the entire Kanban board. Tracking sub-issues is like counting half-pennies instead of rounding up.
What about also excluding "Scrum Masters" and then "Fibonacci Numbers" and two week "sprints"?
Just dropping by to say how much I passionately hate documentation that uses fib() as an example.
Tried that here in EU - no chance so far: Even things I could do easily like office administration/management or whatever projectmanagement - no luck.
As someone who is currently delivering Amazon packages with their own vehicle (Amazon Flex), what’s the process like to become a mail carrier? The miles are starting to take a toll on my car, so delivering for USPS is tempting for me…
It’s a 1 hour application online.
Fingerprints, background checks, references, and drug testing.
It’s the CIA. But good benefits.
I would definitely try this if the vehicles in Phoenix ran cleaner. The old ones have such bad smelling exhaust and you are always breathing it because of the semi-open cab.
electric vehicles are on the way! no clue when Phoenix will get them though
It's funny how everyone wants to get into deliveries as they get older, my dad who's been an engineer for decades talks about it a lot. Something about walking around and doing things really appeals to people as they reach the end of their engineering career
You mean how people want to start walking around and doing things after sitting on their ass in front of a computer for 40 years?
Yea, I'm there with your dad...
My wife and I have a running joke about her giving up accounting and working for USPS instead. Some days I think she’s serious.
Are they even hiring?
Periodically we get a postcard in our junk mail that says they are. So I guess the answer is yes, at least sometimes.
> And no Jira
Not officially, but once you remove the skills required for the tasks, it's not all that different.
Yeah but isn't the pay shit? like making 1/3th is not a win in my books.
I have hella money.
You'll have to give some context. What did hella mean? How many months of your current spend rate do you have in the bank?
First off, the pay for a tenured mail carrier is plenty for me, and I feel like I have a full life.
I take martial arts classes, yoga classes, have nice apartment, eat what I want, have a decent car, etc.
I really don’t want anything, except ridiculous things no one can afford, like sure I’d be up for buying a Cathedral and converting it to a $20m house.
——
Liquid 3 years (savings plus liquid investments). 2 years in IRA. Set to inherit somewhere between 20-40 years worth.
I just have to work to make ends meet, let my investments mature, and eventually inherit.
It feels weird because I love my parents, but it’s something to plan around nonetheless.
I continue a tech career making 200k+ a year and you try to sell me making 100k or less probably for the next 20 years as a win? Nah I love money to much and hella money is like 10m+ where I would chose something that in the next decades would make me so much less. Also no trajectory in career path. I'm happy it works for you but I wouldn't like that. On the other hand I have my big corpo wageslave job and my little own company and almost no free time sadly. I hope to have made enough money and can retire early at some point until then I grind.
I’m on track to retire at 45. I don’t have to do a job I hate until then.
I walk around all the time anyway, to any destination within the city. I have a car and still do this.
To each their own.
Same story here. I work in games so it's always been boom or bust. It's real bad now.
- out of college it took 3 months to find work. It sucked, took over 100 apps, but I found a nice project.
- after that project ended, 3 more months (but less stressful because I had more than one role I was interviewing with).
- Then layoffs, another 3 months in 2022 where it was very competitive (I was in at least 4-5 interview pipelines before my first choice accepted my offer).
- Then that studio quickly shuttered and I haven't found anything full time in 2.5 years. Freelancing kept me up until that wasn't enough, and then I found some non-tech part time work.
working harder than ever with 2 jobs + more portfolio work to prepare for interviews despite having 9 years of experience now. This feels worse than the horror stories I'd hear when finding my first job.
Game dev acquaintances here in Belgium and back in Turkey say it's never been so bad. Studios aren't shutting down but also not hiring over here. Your industry is not having a good time…
I can hire you if you decent and don’t expect high salary ports-spatial5c@icloud.com
I think it's largely industry dependent. Robotics/embedded/etc is actually doing quite well, lots of hiring in space and other fields. More big-data focused fields aren't hiring as much, and it's going to be even harder if you're applying for more senior/VP roles
I apply to embedded/controls engineer roles and get nothing back.
It is all due to outsourcing. AI/H1B isn't taking that much job. Unless government put penalties on outsourcing market isn't going to improve.
I'm seeing like 80% of software dev applications at my company are H1B/OPT, like thousands of candidates - and they're getting hired just because of the sheer numbers they drown everyone else out. So yes, they are 100% taking jobs. A lot of them. I can't comprehend how there are so many.
Maybe there is some pool of candidates that applies to all jobs due to automation making the numbers scewed?
Yep, they are 100% doing that and it’s working. The people only applying selectively are being drowned out.
The market is K shaped.
The peope will wealth are doing well, the rest of the market is not.
There are only so many apps and goods that can be made for rich people/small subset of consumers.
I bet you will find that people working on investment ideas and finance tools which focus on wealth accumulation will be hiring.
"H1B isn't take that much job"
When is YC going to add "This account is based in..." like X has?
yep. Trump added tariffs on physical goods, but there are no taxes on service imports.
Section 174's 15 years amortization rule on foreign R&D is kind of an indirect tax.
Overseas labor spend their salary overseas and pay no US taxes. still not the samething.
There was talk of it. I believe the H.I.R.E. Act that’s been proposed is supposed to add a 25% fee to outsourcing overseas.
Probably a step in the right direction. But if you can hire someone abroad for 20% of the cost of an American worker, then instead of replacing one American with five workers, you replace them with four.
The range difference really depends on where you are too. Unless you're chopping wood, you still need competent people with the right skill set and ability to communicate. When controlling for that I find it's much closer unless you're in SV/Austin/NY.
Wait until you hear what he did to h1b program!
The 100k fee on new applicants? drop in the ocean.
The h1b people spend (most) of their salary in the USA and pay US income taxes. Whereas overseas labor spend their salary over seas and pay no US taxes.
My pet theory is that we are experiencing stagflation, but only people >70 years old have ever really experienced it before, so most people are just scratching their heads wondering how it’s possible that stocks keep going up (inflation) while jobs are disappearing (stagnation). I am most definitely not an economist, nor am I qualified to play one on tv.
> My pet theory is that we are experiencing stagflation, but only people >70 years old have ever really experienced it before, so most people are just scratching their heads wondering how it’s possible that stocks keep going up (inflation) while jobs are disappearing (stagnation).
We do not seem to be technically experiencing stagflation,ir really either half of it, on a national scale, as we appear to still be in a weak aggregate economic expansion and inflation, while higher than the 2% target, is fairly mild at around a 3% annualized rate [0], and, in any case, stocks going up is not inflation (unqualified inflation, which is the inflation part of stagflation, in consumer price inflation, not asset value inflation.)
OTOH, we are in a very weak economy especially outside of the leading AI firms, and there are quite likely both wide regions and wide sectors of the economy which, considered alone, would be in recession, and while inflation is fairly mild, it is high for the last couple decades and being in near-recession conditions. So, for a lot of people, the experience is a something like stagflation (and there are lots of signs that the economic slowdown will continue alongside rising inflation.)
[0] though as economic statistics are only available after the fact, either of these could have changed, but the real defining period for “stagflation” in the US is the 1973-1975 recession, years which saw a minimum of 6.2% inflation (the term was actually coined in the UK for conditions which saw a massive drop in GDP growth rate, fron 5.7% annually to 2.1% in successive years, but not an actual recession, alongside 4.8% inflation.)
>we are in a very weak economy especially outside of the leading AI firms
Isn't that part of the cause? It sucks up so much investment, there's nothing left for anything else. Or at least nothing without such perceived upside.
Either they pull it off and you're replaced by AGI, or they fail to pull it off and you lose your job to the resulting economic implosion.
> Isn't that part of the cause?
Probably not significantly, IMO.
> It sucks up so much investment, there's nothing left for anything else.
Tariff-inflated input costs combined with weak consumer demand are the reason the rest of the economy is slow, and the reason there aren’t places woth strong and near-term upsides for investment dollars to go. AI being the only thing attracting investment is the effect, not the cause.
My sense is that AI is the one area where boards cannot justify cutting back on investment. If there were no AI boom the rest of the economy would still be getting hammered.
There is still a lot of tech investment, deal making, and hiring going on. It has just left the USA.
The definition of inflation since the 1970s has changed significantly e.g. owner equivalent rent. What many people describe as inflation is the change in base cost of capital purchases which has demonstrably risen at a substantially faster pace than baseline inflation see housing/car/education/healthcare prices.
Economic thought today is that rising asset prices relative to wages are not a sign of inflation. They can be attributed to lower cost of capital, increased dollar production of assets, lower risk profiles, and other aspects. However when observing housing prices and education prices which have seen declining utility over the years - it may be that we simply lack an appropriate word for the divergence of capital prices from wages, productivity, and risk.
There is an undeniable societal impact of this divergence, individuals become less economically and socially mobile. They maintain a net debt rather than net asset count for longer, they may be either practically or perceived as locked out of societal progress.
My theory is that all money which could have been invested else where went to AI. It can end up either in investments paying off which will result in AI investors becoming even more rich (poor don't invest in the 1st place) and the rest of society poor or investments will have no returns and it will be wealth destruction on a grand scale and everyone will come poorer afterwards.
> nor am I qualified to play one on tv.
No worries, the ones that are playing economists on TV are not qualified either.
>only people >70 years old have ever really experienced it before,
Part of the observations from the HN reader on the current situation in Finland (believe everything he says, "canary" of Europe?):
>things really suck especially for fresh grads. There's fierce competition for jobs like cashier at supermarket, hundreds of applications for one position is normal. Lots of fresh grads with bachelor's or master's degree compete for those jobs too, since they can't find anything better.
In the USA this was one of the exact "unexpected" developments in the Nixon Recession that was like no-one had seen since the Great Depression. Except that depression there were not yet enough college grads in existence to contribute as a major statistic.
By the mid-70's I'll never forget the crowds vying for a single job opening at a gas station. Pumping gas and cleaning windshields when most stations had only converted half their pumps to self-service. Some with advanced degrees, it was not pretty. These were always minimum-wage jobs too, like supermarkets and fast-food.
When I started working there was a chemical plant within 25 miles where I could have gotten a job easily if I had graduated a few years earlier. Founded in the 1950's by one of my professors, it was actually pretty advanced. The placement office said they hadn't seen an opening in over a year. I was lucky to get a job at an appliance dealer because he liked my ability to program, but he never got a computer the whole time. Otherwise I wouldn't have got noticed, but the job was to prep merchandise for delivery so I was in the warehouse installing a lot of icemakers and doing minor repairs, plus rode along with a service operator one or two days a week to help when it was commercial refrigeration. Which I was learning, but also learned that I was kind of replacing an experienced repairman because they had let too many people go when things first got bad.
About a year later things got worse and he had to kick out the new people and we were gone.
I then began to get unemployment and the need had gotten so great that it must have been the first computerized institutional job boards for that reason. Slim pickings doesn't describe it. But you had to check in every week and apply to whatever you may be qualified for. I had gotten a cheap car (was riding bike to the appliance co) and was selling fruits and vegetables when a job came up at the plant. Not in a lab but out on the large reactor areas working with chemicals and taking readings. The posting had been badly mangled by the typist and it was not obvious it was a chemical job. You could still tell it was technical though. There were over a hundred applicants anyway, and not a realistic chance at all.
Months later I got a lead from my uncle that a lumber company near him needed somebody full time. This was about 35 miles away. All they would do is take my application without getting to talk to anybody, so it took longer to drive there. Still there were about a dozen people applying while I was there so it must have been hundreds of applications overall too.
Now I was already wearing a tie so I went back to the chemical plant and what really made the difference was that there were no new job openings so that time I was the only one showing up in a while. There was only one office building outside the gate, the manager was in and came up to see me but said right away they had no openings. He invited me for a quick tour of the labs and plant anyway, it was good getting inside the gate but like everybody else it was just optimism in the face of declining prosperity.
Surprisingly, he called me back a few days later and offered a part-time job, 4 days a week. He had talked to my professor, and I was a good student. I started out doing a lot of different things for different people, mainly for the analytical lab. In less than a year, they had me come in 5 days a few times when it got heavy and months later I was full-time.
I still wasn't getting twice the minimum wage, but I was so lucky.
After that I only sold produce on the weekends, and only seasonal things I picked myself like avocados and blueberries.
Ftfa (the part I could read) “ growth is buoyed by an exuberant stockmarket and artificial-intelligence investment, while ordinary Americans languish”
Black Friday sales set records and it not even cyber Monday. If Americans are languishing then shouldn’t holiday spending be down?
I postponed all of my CPG and miscellaneous purchases (think AA batteries, socks, winter pants, skin lotion, body wash, etc.) until Black Friday "sales". I also stocked up on stuff like Ramen. I did NOT buy anything special for myself (e.g., I really wanted Switch 2, but I think it's too overpriced and decided not to pull the trigger).
I'd not be surprised if a good number of people did the same. PLUS, the prices rose by quite a bit between the start of the year and now. So we need to see if this increase is sales match up to inflation (which, unfortunately, would be more difficult to rely on knowing that that metric has become politicized.)
Same here. My big purchase for Black Friday last year was an OLED TV.
This year was prescription glasses.
bf related, I bought: 1) trail mix 2) licorice 3) books on diy house / carpentry
not bf related but happened this week: 1) cv axles for my car ~500 and will install myself
i am employed and just make it into 6 figures $110k, which apparently is poverty level now if you have a few dependents. i consider myself fortunate.
fwiw the Tokyo noodle packs' price actually dropped, if instant noodles is one of your staples.
Black Friday did not set records. Bloomberg stated that it was up 4.1%, but that was not inflation adjusted. So it was just slightly higher than flat.
Not necessarily a bad thing…but not great either.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-29/black-fri...
“Slightly higher than flat” is still a new record.
"The best iphone launched yet" feelings
Haha, Black Friday sets record by being the worst discounts ever.
You also have to adjust such things for population, which was up about .6% in August vs. last August, the latest data we have.
Last report I saw said US population was set to drop this year - first time in 250 years. With our demographic boomer bubble, continually dropping fertility, and anti-immigration stance, the trend is likely to continue.
With the growth we already had in 2025 you'd have to nuke LA to end the year with a decline.
https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2025/0...
Most population growth was due to immigration for a while, and immigration (for obvious reasons in 2025) is way, way down.
https://www.derekthompson.org/p/the-us-population-could-shri...
what's your report?
>you'd have to nuke LA
Let's not give this administration ideas, please.
Do you normally get your demographic statistics from Brookings and AEI? My reference is to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/POPTHM its source being https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/pi0825.pdf
If we're thinking of nuking places in CA, I hope to god it's the valley. Put an end to this AI bs
Doesn't black Friday kind of suck now and for the last few years? There's sales all of the time, and there's all those open secrets about black Friday skus now.
I found BF week was "ok" ... found a few genuine bargains ... but Cyber Monday really sucked ... I saw absolutely nothing new in terms of wow prices ... n=1
Consumers in the top 10% of the income distribution accounted for 49.2% of total spending, per Bloomberg. If anything, in my opinion, this strengthens the k-shaped economic growth stat that the article mentions.
Yup, only the rich are powering this economy now. That bodes poorly for the country’s stability long term.
Top 10% is a household making more than $191k so a couple making $95k each.
Rich indeed!
Generally speaking, the rich is anyone who makes slightly more than you.
It's like the saying about alcoholics - "an alcoholic is anyone who drinks 1 more drink than you".
can also look at it as an opportunity to gather friends and start a small drywall company. Those are in demand, for example. The rich are building more buildings than ever. If you live in the bay area, you can very well see 300k / year if you keep yourself busy.
Then if you're successful, you can sell it to a PE firm where it will further buoy the rich!
Can't see how this positive feedback loop gets us to a bad place at all!
>Consumers in the top 10% of the income distribution accounted for 49.2% of total spending, per Bloomberg.
What was the historical trend? Otherwise you can't draw much from just "49.2%" alone, aside from a vague sense that stuff should be fairer.
> What was the historical trend?
No, it is not normal for 10% of the coountry to power half the spending. Just think about that statistic for a second. Spending includes groceries, services, and other continual needs. A few private jets can't outspend millions of people buying food.
But here's your chart: https://preview.redd.it/2pcvmm0u3jpf1.png?width=798&auto=web...
>No, it is not normal for 10% of the coountry to power half the spending.
Yet, if you look at your chart, it was 40% in 1989s and have been slowly edging up. While 40% is a smaller number than 50%, you can make the same argument about 40% not being "normal", yet society has been chugging along just fine.
Black friday is a datapoint. But maybe people are deferring purchases to these sale periods. What proportion of goods were luxury vs. not.
Also poor people can get into debt they are still poor. Maybe they can afford a nintendo switch but not afford to raise a family.
The only things I bought on Black Friday were things I would normally have bought but just waited a few weeks/months to get.
Same among people I know. My MIL needed to replace some kitchen appliances and waited for BF sales.
Deferring sales is one datapoint. But setting records is another datapoint and counter to deferring IMO.
Edit there is talk below of inflation adjusted numbers being high but meh
K shaped economy with increasing expenditure means the wealthier increase their spending as a portion of the economy and at an absolute level. It is not interpreted as the polity doing well - if anything, it is cause for concern.
The wealthy don't buy more crap on black Friday.
Inequality is very visible in terms of what sort of consumption occurs. Gotta look at the qualitatives.
Sure they do. And during the holiday season too.
Wealthy people love feeling like they are getting a deal.
I would not expect wealthy people to be more price sensitive over all.
I don't know if it is just the wealthy either.
The retired middle class boomers I know are completely outside the business cycle.
While I don't think they have enough to really be considered wealthy, they have no mortgage payment, a social security check, a pension and most have a 401k.
The business cycle will not change their spending one bit.
It may, a bit. If the 401k is in the stock market, and the stock market is down, their total visible money is down. That tends to decrease enthusiasm for spending.
It may also affect it a lot. Retirees I know have a retirement plan that involves their retirement accounts being at a specific level at the end of each year. If their accounts are over that level because the stock market had a good year, they consider it funny money that they're allowed to spend.
That's not a plan, it's a suicide note with extra steps.
> That's not a plan, it's a suicide note with extra steps.
Being an aging human is a suicide note. The extra steps are the entire point of retirement.
Shouldn’t every year be a record considering population growth and inflation?
You could look at inflation adjusted per-capita sales, of course.
Ya, when I ask Gemini:
While there isn't a definitive inflation-adjusted per-capita number for 2025, recent data indicates that overall sales growth was outpaced by inflation, meaning consumers likely bought fewer items. Total Black Friday spending was up, but the average number of items purchased declined. For instance, Salesforce reported total spending was up 3% but order volume was down 2%, with average selling prices climbing 7%.
...
Per-capita sales: The increase in spending is largely driven by higher prices, meaning the actual volume of goods purchased per person likely decreased compared to the previous year, even with higher total spending, says The New York Times.
The rise in Black Friday sales is misleading because the sales reflect inflation rather than increased consumer demand.
I think it is more that a greater number of products were heavily marketed by a greater number of companies. My social feeds were flooded with single-product companies and online-only companies aggressively selling all kinds of gear and gadgets. Travel pillows (like 5 different brands), ski socks, luggage, exercise equipment, etc etc. Not gonna lie, I bought some stuff I likely would not have otherwise!
[dead]
the country is growing so it will commonly "set records". We need to look at it in the context of previous years. Before I went and checked the stats I expected to see instore shopping to be down since americans are poorer than previous years and online shopping to be up since demand is growing and online caters to a worldwide audience.
Checking the stats online growth is up and on par with previous years creating that record breaking stat. Instore numbers arent out yet but some figures are claiming less foot traffic in stores compared with previous years. So i'd say to early to really call if spending was down(compared with expectations)
Black Friday has become Cyber Monday as well. Everyone has a phone, nobody is waiting to log on to their PC at work to do some online shopping.
The holiday season on the whole is a much better indicator, not just one single day. And even then, spending needs to be checked against debt incurred.
Black Friday started weeks before the actual day in order to increase the spending. It’s not an apples to apples comparison to prior years.
As a marketing term yes but the Bloomberg analysis is only looking at the actual single day following Thanksgiving.
> Ftfa (the part I could read) [...]
https://archive.is/NvSXc
A few observations:
1. I saw the same headline - the article stated that there were record SEASON sales, not Black Friday sales. The headline did not match the content of the article. 2. Record revenue, not necessarily record units sold. To be expected with inflation. 3. Savvy online shoppers may be bundling purchases to reduce shipping costs. Waiting for a seasonal sale to buy holiday gifts as well as detergent, snacks and underwear may be quite prudent.
Finally, increased sales revenue does not necessarily equate to more jobs. It can, but by no means does it have to.
Not necessarily. Average income can be up substantially at the same time that median income remains flat or even declines. This means that it is possible for spending by wealthier Americans to make up for sales lost from the unemployed middle class and poor.
The volume is down. What actually increased is the $$ value.
The market is diverging with people who are in the upper echelons having money to spend and everyone else having nothing.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2025/11/25/us-e...
The K shaped economy.
Not necessarily. Lots of explanations:
(1) People wait for when they perceive they'll get the best deals to do their shopping. (2) K-shaped economy (data is already bearing this out btw): Spending from the wealthy is driving consumption figures vs. the bulk of the population (3) Anxiety about rising prices cause people to purchase now vs. later. See for example RAM prices.
Others have pointed out the brackets really buying, but I'd also argue that people deferring their purchases to a period of sales is generally not a good thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipstick_effect
>Ftfa (the part I could read)
You did in fact not rtfm?
>Black Friday sales set records and it not even cyber Monday.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/29/business/black-friday-us-econ...
I don't know where you're seeing "record numbers". 2024 wasn't a great year and you can argue spending was flat from that after inflation. I think the more relevant factor is "who" is spending the money in such a k-shaped economy. .
Pop growth of ca .5 pct and inflation delivered said record
I didn't buy shit on purpose this weekend, like every year and like most weekends. Some people do that. I wish more would.
Don’t underestimate credit cards and consumerism.
K-shaped economy is the buzz word these days
i remember when it was the buzzword in q3 2020 too....
Yes it’s been a thing for a while
One of the truly great things about American toxic individualism is that it need not be constrained by rationality; American capitalism finds ways around that. Need to Christmas shop for everyone in your family but don't have enough actual income? Simply go into massive credit card debt! You're probably pre-approved for several cards already; check for our flyer!
Not sure if it's been missed or I'm an anomaly. But as a senior level software engineer who graduated in the 10s, with a wealth of experience, I too (like the juniors who get reported on) am struggling to get a new job. Either I'm just not as good as I think I am, or the barrier is ridiculously high for the next type of job I'm trying to achieve (high paying, product focused developer).
https://archive.is/NvSXc
.
Also, shocking to see no mention of the investment thesis, let alone critique of it.
Thanks for the link.
What do you mean by the "investment thesis"? Would you clarify?
The investment thesis in AI is that the decline in consumer spending in the other sectors of the economy won't matter when the consumers cease to be a significant participant in the economy in the near term: that moving investment away from the activity in agriculture, transportation, goods and services, etc., is rational because those sectors are soon to be obsolete when their customers buying power and long term capacity to produce buying power is sucked away.
Think of the promise of AGI as a promise of billions of tireless immigrants with PhDs who outcompete the other ethnicities in the labor market. It's the same reason people stopped investing in Detroit-based things years ahead of the industry pullout.
I’m not sure I follow. So, are you saying that wealth will become completely concentrated at the top and the rest of us are obsolete, out of work and broke?
That seems unlikely. What is the point of an economy if there is no one who is actually able to consume?
It’s more likely than you think. In fact, this was true for almost the entirety of human history. The last 100 years, where the common person is NOT in destitute poverty, is the exception to the rule.
There will not be no one who is able to consume. The investment thesis is that the investment classes' servant robot armies will be doing trillions of USD of consumption, mostly in metals, munitions, chips, etc.
I don't agree with the thesis, but that is what the thesis is.
The ones who own the robots will be doing the consumption.
Of course, this all implies that the rest of us will just sit and starve quietly. Somehow I don't think that's likely.
No, we need entertainment, potato chips, some drugs and the mandated degree of access to contraceptives. I'm sure OpenAI can calculate the optimal levels of each.
And the current reaction is to make entertainment and potato chips more expensive, and to ban contraceptives and drugs.
The only saving grace of this administration's cruelty is its stupidity. It wants to rule like Rome over slaves, but didn't learn how the rulers kept the populace from uprising and rebelling.
Yes, the time-honored strategy of keeping the poi holloi fed and entertained just enough to prevent riot, but not anymore.
Long-term, it usually fails because the elites become too greedy and too complacent because they haven't seen what a large scale riot looks like, and try to squeeze too much. Then things blow up somewhere and there's a mad scramble to prevent it elsewhere by making concessions (witness all the improvements in labor rights in the West after the Russian revolution).
The point of an economy is to put a stupid flag on mars. Or to melt the ice caps so that Russia has access to ports that aren't clogged with ice. Or to get revenge and throw lavish parties. Or any of a million other arbitrary goals dreamed up by those few who get to steer this thing.
For most of us its just gas or breaks, but those at the top have non economic goals. The economic indicators are looking positive because progress is being made towards those goals, but the gloom persists because most of us don't want the outcomes that were progressing towards.
We're in a car that we can't steer, and the economist article says everything is fine because look how high the number on the speedometer is.
Mixing two things up.
A point for the economy.
The mechanics of trade.
Or the objective outcomes vs subjective goals.
It is entirely possible for an economy to land up in an equilibrium point that works for a small set of people and not for the majority.
The point of the economy is a subjective societal thing, achieved via laws, regulation and enforcement of those rules.
more importantly, good luck to any country that has to deal with an environment full of huge swathes of people festering with the anger and nihilism that comes from going from something to nothing...not for me
Investment thesis?
The author must have written the headline as a legitimate question to the audience because they certainly did not make much effort to answer it in the article.
Betteridge’s law!
> Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.
In this case it was more of a "Meh, maybe." Which IMO is worse than Betteridge's Law.
I see hardest job market ever. Since 2023 I had ~dozen interviews and 0% up to offer pass rate (half fully passed interviews, with no offer at the end due to variety of cases like money change of mind, other candidates won, ghosting,..)! Up to recent couple years I had over 90% interview passing rate, even in dot com and 2010 (when I had 6 companies interview with 6 offers). I am 55y with rich experience vertically (from low level to high level) and horizontally (multimedia, high tech, many platforms and OS's, major programming languages and few good to pass hard leetcode like interviews). I am better than ever with my skills. (btw leetcode is "disease" and counterproductive the way it is used, I have to say that as that might be part of deeper explanation and I pass it majority of the times, although had few "walk on water" type that maybe only "Jesus of coding" could pass or maybe even he could not)
I haven't been around for much (27 y.o. with 4 y.o.e.) but I've applied for probably 500 jobs in the past 6 months, and had maybe 4 interviews out of it. It's tough out here.
I don’t know, I’m hiring and the candidates so far have not been impressive.
Maybe that is restricted to my area / region but I got one am confused.
That signifies that your company is not appealing to impressive candidates for some reason or another. Companies that offer good pay, some other great benefits in the place of good pay, or kind of okay pay but very interesting work have no trouble getting people, especially in today's market.
That goes against the idea that impressive candidates have a difficulty finding a job.
No. Impressive candidates are applying to jobs that pay somewhat reasonably, even if it's below what they expect. If candidates who are desperate are still completely skipping over a company, that says something about that company.
I am also hiring, in Europe with very good work/life balance but modest salaries and like the parent I'm also not that impressed with candidates, so to me the other explanation is that candidates have a wildly incorrect estimation of what is a somewhat reasonable pay in 2025.
The position with FAANG like salaries have reduced drastically. Companies paying 6 figures just to have the privilege to have an entry level developer with this then seen as magical skill of being able to type code was a dream that is over. Look at salaries of engineers in other industries, breaking 6 figures needs a lot of seniority, $150k is rarely heard of for ICs.
I don't know what the market is like in the EU. I can just tell you North America is really bad with a deluge of talent. And sadly, many can't really live off of an EU salary.
breaking six figures in California isn't that impressive unless you are literally single and out of college. But that quickly gets eaten up when rent is 2k+/month and you have school loans to pay off. When you're not paying nearly six figures for college and have your taxes built into most of your day to day life, you don't need six figures.
I understand things are different there, but I thought even in California 6 figures at entry or mid level was a thing only in software engineering, so my point was that premium over other professions was evaporating.
I’m in Europe too.
We pay well. Very well in fact. We’re a small company though.
I have a harder time hiring here than at my previous position with a much larger company, even though my current employer is superior to my old one in every way except for brand recognition.
And from others in this space (who have at times tried to recruit me) this is not a problem unique to my company.
Are you hiring remotely in Europe? Gonna blow your mind with my skills if you are.
If you're a stellar applicant, you can still get ghosted by simply having your CV at the bottom on the pile.
What's your area, what qualities are you looking for, and what's your filtering process?
If you're not in a major hub and ATS is filtering out all the good candidates not gaming the system, the results are inevitable. If you're looking for a senior for junior or less pay... Well, it's easier to keep searching than take a job that literally can't pay rent in some high COL areas.
We’re hiring software engineers, full stack (frontend leaning). Email me at gyani at tabtabtab dot ai if you are in London and looking for onsite roles.
It’s interesting bc I still see mid level (7 yoe) developers getting jobs with no issues. Lots of dispersion of difficulty depending on speciality as well
In which part of the world are you seeing this? In the bay area?
SF and NY
Seems like those are the only hubs kind of hiring. The few recruiter messages I get these day seem to be from there (despite saying I'm not inerested in re-locating).
And even those are way down. Los Angles simply seems dead from my experience the last 2 years.
Yes, smaller firms and startups are still hiring aggressively.
Not just. I know some average joes that landed at Google, Meta, and DoorDash recently
Could it be regional?
It seems we are nearing the bottom of the business cycle. I lived through 2001 and 2008. Both were worse than now. It will get better.
How do we know this is the bottom?
You don’t know until unemployment and GDP numbers are released. Generally when the fed starts making successive rate cuts, the economy is doing poorly. Since 1953 10 out of 11 recessions happened when republicans held power. So maybe that is also why I think we have a little way to go before things get better. I’m not sure why that is and I don’t want to start a political debate. Things will get better. They always do.
>I’m not sure why that is and I don’t want to start a political debate
I'm late to the party and am willing. It's becsuse we cut taxes a lot during GOP terms but no one has the balls to raise taxes back up. Thars pretty much the one bit of respect I have for HW Bush despite it being the nail in the coffin for re-election. But for the most part, GOP appeals to business, and the easiest talking point is to make them pay less taxes (though this line has blurred since Citizen's United).
That's really the gist of it. Politicians (on both sides of the aisle) need to know when to raise taxes in good times and not coast on the benefits. That way tax cuts can happen as relief in harder times. Instead we're headed to hard times and nearing default levels in the US debt. In other words: we're cooked.
Things do tend to get better, but the time scale can vary. It's hard to tell whether we're deep into a recession, or we're just starting to walk into a depression. You never really know which it is in the first year.
> Since 1953 10 out of 11 recessions happened when republicans held power
I used to think this was because the party that represents the ruling class didn't know what they were doing.
Now I think these economic collapses and ensuing fire sales are not accidents, they know exactly what they're doing.
Recession are a natural part of the business cycle though. Like it's good to have them, Democrats not allowing a recession to occur just makes the next bubble even bigger. And all kinds of inefficient businesses are allow to zombify when the resources could be used elsewhere.
Now, the bigger problem is that you're supposed to raise taxes during the boom so that you can run deficits during the recession to recover quickly. Unfortunately we run deficits during the boom so that the crash is even bigger as well ...
Just because recessions do happen, does not mean that its good to have recessions, not does it make them necessary. Popping bubbles can be contained and not blow up the entire system if we have proper regulations, for instance.
> Democrats not allowing a recession to occur just makes the next bubble even bigger. And all kinds of inefficient businesses are allow to zombify when the resources could be used elsewhere.
This is honestly just horseshit. Both parties want to avoid recession, its just that one of them believes in established economic theories and is successful; while the other one is steeped in crackpot economics which have failed repeatedly.
> Popping bubbles can be contained and not blow up the entire system if we have proper regulations, for instance.
Perhaps we have a different definition of recessions but to me you cannot pop a bubble without a recession. How does the bubble deflate without a decrease in nominal GDP? The recession doesn't need have effects lingering for years/decades but one needs to occur.
> Both parties want to avoid recession
I mean in name only. Republicans pretty consistently just cut taxes while shifting government spending from poor to wealthy which really just causes a recession since the marginal propensity to spend of the wealthy is lower (hence ballooning SNP500 while weaker retail spending; wealthy's savings goes into SNP500 while non-wealthy cut back on consumption).
> its just that one of them believes in established economic theories and is successful
Which economic theory do the Democrats believe in? Any real theory has upsides and downsides and I just never either of the two major parties acknowledge or implement the downside (which is always required for the upside).
Large social nets are about redistributing wealth so everybody is (within a _very_ large range) equal but Democrats don't actually do this; they just give money to the bottom individuals without taking from the top which just means the future poor generations have less as they have to repay with interest to the original wealthy generations (and inheritors).
Have you ever read Yonatan’s article on Shock Wealth and how the ruling class is incentivized to cause shocks?
https://medium.com/newco/your-financial-shock-wealth-4845e6d...
Yes if only the US still released those numbers...
And except for Jimmy Carter, every president before the Republican in power during the recession was a Democrat.
it isn't, but the post-covid inflation and subsequent rates increase has caused something like a recession, just not everywhere at once - so you see sectors busting and coming back, but overall kinda-sorta chugging along economy.
now what happens if the rates won't go down much from here might just be everything slowing down all at once and then they'll drop the rates to 0 again, so it'll get better... two years later.
Until the bottom has passed, you can't know.
When AI finally crashes, the cycle will reset
My experience is companies are hiring CS grads for helpdesk, and maybe eventually promoting them to what they went to school for.
I'm a self-taught senior. At my current company have only ever been a developer, but everyone I work with started as help desk and got moved to development later. I know this is anecdotal, but they all have CS degrees. I think people still underestimate the glut in inexperienced CS grads we're working through rn.
I learned recently our company has an informal policy to discourage hiring fresh grads, which would explain why I haven't seen any hires at the bottom of our grading scale. I'm one step above (though arguably I could be two up by experience, I misplayed my negotiations), but I kinda feel like I'm dangling off the edge.
No, because the only thing keeping the fed from lowering interest rates and juicing real estate and everything else is a strong labor market.
You have it backwards. Layoffs these days increase stock value because everyone is hedging that bad job numbers will force the feds to lower interest rates. Something Powell has hesitated to do in order to keep inflation in check.
It's a very screwed up incentive to be rewarded for breaking the system, but that's 2025 in a nutshell.
> Layoffs these days increase stock value because everyone is hedging that bad job numbers will force the feds to lower interest rates.
Layoffs generally cause stock prices to go up because of anticipated cost reduction/efficiency: https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwab046
If you have some source to make the case that layoff-stock price change is correlated for a different reason these days, it would be interesting to read it. But I doubt anything has changed
>If you have some source to make the case that layoff-stock price change is correlated for a different reason these days, it would be interesting to read it.
The phenomenon is pretty recent so there won't truly be any studies on it in a while. But look up "Jobless Boom". Here's a piece of what I'm talking about:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jobless-boom-ai-economy-labor-m...
>For much of 2025, the job market was described by economists as "no hire, no fire," meaning an environment where workers could count on job security even as hiring around the U.S. cooled. But conditions have changed, and the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate in both September and October, citing increasing risks to employment growth and with Fed Chair Jerome Powell noting that policymakers are closely watching layoff announcements by big employers.
personally, I think the AI efficiencies are a smokescreen, but the point of how this job contraction is forcing he fed's hands is hard to ignore after some 2 years of holding rates steady.
And the fact that everybody knows real inflation is still high.
How can inflation not be high in the US given increased tariffs, deportations and uncertainty
The fed has cut rates 5 times in the past 14 months
Huh, the link now points to an article titled:
> "Why worries about American job losses are overstated."
Instead of the archived version.
While the beginning of the article is the same, the last line in the preview differs:
> Original: "...to support a weakening jobs market."
> New: "...to support a weakening jobs market. Look closer, however, and much of the gloom seems to be overdone."
Though I don't have a subscription to check the rest of the article.
I hope so – how else am I going to find a great cofounder?!
Mostly kidding.
-Slides up to the bar-
Tell me more…
Stick an email (throwaway or otherwise) in your bio and I'll reach out!
no, but the purchasing power of americans is already lowering due to the taxes on imports introduced by donald trump, by chocking supply the demand has to be filled by fewer local american companies or the extra artifical cost will have to be passed onto american workers, the deportation of illegal immigrants will increase wages due to the decreased supply of workers, which could offset it.
Its a little strange for the article to not mention how much of the "stock growth" and GDP growth is mostly due to unsustainable, large investments in Data centers. Its not clear if that will continue into 2026, and what will happen when it stops.
My personal prediction is that, barring some kind of insurrection/revolution, Congress will flip in 2026 and force POTUS to back down on tariff nonsense, which will finally un-paralyze businesses which will resume capital investments and hiring. 2026 itself might be really rough though, if the AI bubble pops.
The Economist peddling doom n gloom IN THIS ECONOMY?
There is still half an hour until the tank, plenty of time to sell..
"We seem to have no clue, but we can get an article out of it anyway"--the Economist.
This market is sick. =(
730,000 H-1B holders within the U.S. Can we just cancel this program please?
Why do you want to cancel French immersion teachers? https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=french+language+immer...
Or nurses? https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=registered+nurse&city...
The problem isn't H-1B. It's H-1B dependent employers gaming the system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B-dependent_employer https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62c-h1b-depende...
The gaming is the problem. I don't trust this admin to fix the loopholes.
That said, I have no clue why anyone in the US is struggling to find nurses unless they expect RN's to be paid minimum wage or be caged down to fractional work. That just doesn't fly.
Not everyone wants to relocate to rural hospital areas (where they're often most in demand as a fraction of the total workers). The wages are often tied to what insurance (and medicare) can reimburse and that rate isn't necessarily going up fast enough to properly staff hospitals.
Bigger ones in the cities with more expensive procedures can afford it better. The smaller hospitals an hour or two drive away from a city are the ones that are hurting the most.
https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/11/14/how-trumps-100k...
> Frederick Health Hospital in rural Frederick County, Maryland, is ground zero for the hurdles the new fee has created. The hospital is the only emergency room in a county that’s approximately 650 square miles in size. Patients would have to drive as far as 50 miles to get to another facility.
> “We see about 70,000 to 80,000 emergency department visits — one of the busiest emergency departments in the state,” said Jamie White, chief nursing officer at Frederick Health.
> Not only is her hospital one of the busiest in the state, it’s also chronically short-staffed. White said it can’t compete with salaries at hospitals in urban areas or with jobs that allow for more work-life-balance.
Wage suppression? Maybe. But it's not "raise wages" that is an option - its "close the hospital".
Those are really small percentages of people. I doubt they were referencing french immersion teachers
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/o... Computer-Related Occupations is more than half
The position of "Can we just cancel this program please?" I take to mean all of the H-1B visas. This is a position that I've often seen echoed by people who haven't considered the other positions that use this program and instead see it dominated by technology.
... And it is dominated by technology. And you can see that in the charts and tables of "Top H-1B employers by visa approval" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Top_H-1B_employers_b... and how it changed from 2006 to 2017. Everyone I know who is on a H-1B or H-4 visa is affiliated with a technology job.
There's also a loophole that if one's spouse is approved under a H-1B visa and they're under an H-4 visa, they can also work in a H-1B visa field.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa
This also brings up another option. Let's create a new classification of the H visa. Let's call it the H-1T visa. They've done this before - the H-1C visa ( https://www.uscis.gov/archive/h-1c-registered-nurse-working-... ) used to be the one that nurses could get approved under from 1999 to 2009.So, spitballing the idea... the H-1T visa would be for all STEM positions. This does not extend to a spouse (the spouse would need their own approval). This visa would be for all professions classified as 15-xxxx, 17-xxxx, and 19-xxxx by the BLS ( https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes_stru.htm ). That is, if your job is 15-1234 and you are a foreign worker, you must have an H-1T (or O-1) visa. The H-1T visa would have a different cap that is independent from the H-1B visa lottery and instead of a lottery it is done by auction. There is a 10% of salary fee paid with a minimum of $10,000 that is to be paid into the SMART scholarship and S-STEM programs. Applicants under this program may not be paid less than the median wage as determined for that profession ( https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes151251.htm ) regardless of skill level for the location where the employee is based. Companies with more than 10% H-1T visa employees may not apply for new H-1T visas if their employees are not compensated for 2000 hours of work or PTO a year (prorated for hire and termination dates - no more than 50 hours a week may be counted for an employee). Positions to be filled by a H-1T visa must first be advertised and open for 30 days on usajobs.gov (expanding the scope of the site) before applications from foreign nationals or other H-1T visa holders may apply to it. Random audits may be done for any position listed and filled by a H-1T visa holder to ensure that the position matches the job listing (with punitive fines per infraction).
---
My goal with those spitballs is do decouple the H-1T and H-1B visas which largely work outside of tech. It clearly establishes who can work in that field. It tries to close loopholes (though I'm sure that there are some in there that I've missed) and tries to make sure that consultancies aren't trying to make a deep bench of people they pay part time or not at all. It's attempting to make sure that people are being compensated at market rates based on real data rather than more nebulous titles.
Wage suppression
Could you elaborate on how wages of native French speaking language teachers are being suppressed? Or that nurses in North Dakota are not getting jobs because the hospital is going through the process of hiring a qualified nurse under the H-1B program?
I'm not saying that the teachers or nurses are not underpaid - they should be paid more, but the ability for the organization to pay them more is often constrained by other factors (teacher salaries for public schools, medicare reimbursement rates for hospitals).
Saying "no, we shouldn't hire them" doesn't mean that a qualified American teacher will show up or new nurses will go to Fargo to get a job. Rather, foreign language programs in schools will be discontinued and hospitals in rural areas will close (being unable to meet the required nurse to patient ratios).
There are problems with the system. People on HN often forget that there are a lot of other professions outside of technology that make use of the H-1B when there is a genuine need.
Unfortunately technology - and especially technology consultancies - have flooded the application process for the H-1B visas to the point where H-1B has become synonymous with Indian programmer working at a WITCH company.
> Public Law 114–113, part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, imposed a fee of $4,000 on H-1B petitions [edit: for H-1B dependent employers] and $4,500 on L-1A and L-1B petitions. The additional H-1B fees would apply to all petitions postmarked on or after December 18, 2015, and until September 30, 2025.
This apparently has expired. The proclamation "Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers" is of dubious footing.
You know what would have been good with the budget bill (the previous Consolidated Appropriations Act was a budget bill signed by Obama)? Quadrupling the application fee for H-1B dependent employers and hiring auditors to make sure that the applicants are properly qualified, that there is a position open (not just a position on the bench at a consultancy) for the applicant to fill, that the position to be filled was attempted to be filled by a and that the employer is making full use of their existing employees (e.g. no one on the bench).
This is something that is (was) there and can be regulated and audited and catch the problematic employers - not French teachers and nurses.
If they bring in tons of new French language teachers and nurses, that suppresses the wages of people here. Those companies would have to raise wages to find workers, and if there aren't any workers, they'd have to raise wages to fight for what few workers there are, which might help some of our OWN UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE find LUCRATIVE WORK as they see they can become a nurse or language teacher and make a healthy living doing so.
The only people who need immigrants are greedy businesses. It makes life worse for literally everyone else in a nation.
The more than 400,000 tech workers who have been laid off since 2022 are a clear reflection of wage suppression in the industry, as many of them have spent extended periods without a paycheck.
> The more than 400,000 tech workers who have been laid off since 2022 are a clear reflection of wage suppression in the industry,
IMO, they are a clearer reflection of the fact that the industry has lots of jobs that are tied to remote future payoff and dependent on financing outside of operations, and that tighter money policies reduced the flow of investment into the broad industry (outside of the AI segment), cutting a lot of those jobs.
Again, you are focusing on tech workers. Not everyone on a H-1B visa is a tech worker.
There is a problem with tech and how oversubscribed the H-1B visa is because of tech contracting - especially with visa dependent employers. However, the suggestion to cancel the program would impact many other professions (that already suffer because of tech in the field) where the visa isn't used in the same way.
The problems that we are seeing is not one of the H-1B visa, but rather large amounts of money sloshing around in the tech industry trying to get things done first and consultancies trying to get a piece of the pie from people who have ideas but no idea of how to do do whatever the hyped thing is today.
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No.
Source: Betteridge's law of headlines
Bettridge’s Law of Bettridge’s Law: there will always be someone in the comments section mentioning Bettridge’s Law.
We’re really just tired of news slowly morphing into Buzzfeed style clickbait, and this is our only outlet to complain about it.
Other annoying headlines:
“This is why interest rates are so high”
“What I learned about X from one month doing Y”
I'm not seeing how this article is clickbait of any kind. Betteridge's Law really only works for articles that manufacture a provocative question out of nowhere to attract readership, and then have to sheepishly back down in the article body because obviously it's not true. But this article is formulated as a question because it has genuine speculation about the future that nobody is quite sure about. It has points for both sides of the argument. There's no Yes/No answer here. How else would you format the title of such an article?
Did you read the article?
The author admits that the answer to his own question is no. Which, again, affirms Betteridge’s Law.
> A more plausible explanation for the present weak patch, and for companies’ reluctance to hire, is Trumpian uncertainty. That is now beginning to ease. The chaos of Mr Trump’s tariff roll-out seems to be receding. Deportations and changes to visa rules will remain disruptive, but businesses are starting to adapt. Although 2026 is unlikely to be a year of calm and clarity for America, it may well be a bit less frenzied. That would boost the labour market. American workers’ decade-long hot streak may have longer to run.
To paraphrase his conclusion: no. Things are soft, but in general, probably fine for 2026.
This is what I am saying - I’m sick of seeing sensational, clickbait, disaster-porn headlines, especially when the author timidly backs off and plays both sides once they have your attention. It’s such a lack of journalistic integrity.
996 - it's a global marketplace of talent and very few in America are willing to work 996. If you are, you either are the founder type or young and unshackled.
I worked with what are effectively 996ers in software, they largely drag on projects because they value neither their own time nor anyone else's.
This is my experience as well. For a lot of these people, it's performative. Just kind of existing at work for 12 hours is "getting work done" to them, despite the fact it's life destroying for pretty much everyone that has an actual life to live.
It's really disgusting and harms most people.
Labor laws in California make infeasible (for good reason). The kinds of jobs going into 996 won't pay enough for exempt status, so that's 32 hours of overtime a week.
you are 100% right.
I know people don't want to hear this . . . but at my mega large corp, we recently laid off hundreds people who basically didn't do this.
>we recently laid off hundreds people who basically didn't do this.
Did you give them a choice or simply say "we've moving most operations to China?"
no choice we simply looked at hours worked via remote tracking.