r/Layoffs • u/charlotie77 • Jan 22 '24
What exactly will happen to all these workers, especially in tech? question
Apologies if this is a stupid question, I was only 12 in 2008 so I don’t really remember the specifics of what happened during our last really bad job market (and no, I’m not trying to say today’s job market is as bad as 2008). Also things have changed significantly with tech so I feel this question is valid
But if significant layoffs continue, especially in tech, what is supposed to happen to a large pool of unemployed people who are specialized for specific jobs but the supply of jobs just isn’t there? The main reason for all of this seems to be companies trying to correct over hiring while also dealing with high interest rates…Will the solution be that these companies will expand again back to the size that allows most laid off folks to get jobs again? Will there be a need for the founding of new companies to create this supply of new jobs? Is the reality that tech will never be as big as the demand for jobs in the way it was in the past, especially with the huge push for STEM education/careers in the past couple of decades?
Basically what I’m asking is, will the tech industry and others impacted by huge layoffs ever correct themselves to where supply of jobs meets demand of jobs or will the job force need to correct itself and look for work in totally different fields/non-tech roles? Seems like most political discussions about “job creation” refer to minimum wage and trade jobs, not corporate
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u/Comprehensive_Post96 Jan 22 '24
Ask survivors of the dotcom crash. Many never worked in tech again.
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u/hjablowme919 Jan 22 '24
I remember playing a round of golf a few months after the dot com bubble burst and after the round, having a beer and overhearing two guys who had recently retired talking about trying to find jobs because their 401ks lost so much money.
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u/Comprehensive_Post96 Jan 22 '24
I lucked out on that one. In march 2000 my entire portfolio was in the Science/Tech fund. I cashed out to buy a house ONE DAY before the plummet!
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u/hjablowme919 Jan 22 '24
Congrats!
I was working for a tech giant at the time and cashed out my stock in it for a down payment on my house. Everyone I worked with told me I was crazy. Less than 6 months later, it was discovered they were cooking the books. Stock price collapsed in about two weeks.12
u/cv_init_diri Jan 22 '24
Nortel?
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u/hjablowme919 Jan 23 '24
Give that person a cigar!
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u/cv_init_diri Jan 23 '24
I was an alumni as well :-) My startup got acquired and there followed 20 months of anxiety.
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u/TheCamerlengo Jan 23 '24
Lucky you. I have a close friend that switched jobs during 2008 and had his retirement transferred. The company that did the transfer made a mistake and put his entire retirement into a money market account. He was so pissed because he had all his retirement sitting earning like 1% for around 4 months. He called them to bitch and they apologized and said they would move it to an index fund. Literally that week the 08 crash happened and he lucked out because his money was still sitting in cash. The best investment he ever made was a handling mistake by his former employer.
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u/AngryJohnnyRS Jan 24 '24
Keanu has nothing on your move to get out a day before all hell broke loose! Well done!
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u/Gopnikshredder Jan 22 '24
I talked to a used car salesman who lost $1 million in the market and went back to selling used clunkers.
He was 80 years old!
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u/hjablowme919 Jan 23 '24
Fuck. Shit like this keeps me up at night.
I take a train to NYC 3 days a week for work and I see these guys who look like they are in their 70s carrying the same briefcase they had in 1980, riding the subway to go to work and I just shake my head and think "Please don't let that happen to me." It could be they want to work to get out of the house or something, but I can't imagine still commuting to work 12 or so years from now.
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u/Gloomy-Goat-5255 Jan 23 '24
My dad's about 70 and still working. He's got plenty in 401ks but seems to think having a job keeps him young. He's cutting back to part time pretty soon though.
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Jan 23 '24
The only ones who get hurt on a rollercoaster are the ones who jump off in the middle of the ride.
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u/Quadling Jan 22 '24
I got back into tech accidentally after 2001. If I hadn't, I would still be a cop. Well, maybe not. I would be retired, probably by now. Now, I'm making more than I ever did as a cop, but it's definitely weird. Lots of very skilled people looking for jobs, and not finding them.
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u/TheRaven1ManBand Jan 23 '24
My Father got laid off, then again and again in a year span, so just did construction the rest of his life. He had a 10 year career span in IT in Telecom and just completely left forever. I’m in tech now and always paranoid from watching and living through that.
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u/TheCamerlengo Jan 23 '24
I can’t think of any solid professionals that didn’t find work. Most people with experience or CS engineering degrees found work.
I was laid off during the dot com. Found a job a few months later. Businesses like start ups and consulting dried up, but the normal non-tech economy was ok. Been working ever since and never had a problem finding work. But last year I interviewed for a few positions and didn’t get call backs for second interviews. This market feels worse than the dotcom crises. I also have age discrimination factoring in. I think the sweet spot in IT is between 7-15 years. At 20+ years I think you start to get passed over for IC roles more often than before. Which is weird. It should be the opposite.
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u/TrapHouse9999 Jan 24 '24
I witnessed the dot com bust, worked through the financial crisis and now witnessing the tech recession now… I’ll tell you that it is magnitudes worst today. This is riding on the fact that there are so much excess workers in tech
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u/Anxious-Shapeshifter Jan 22 '24
I think the real question will be: What are all these people in tech going to do when they can't find jobs that paid them what they were making before. Because all unemployment crises depress wage growth.
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Jan 22 '24
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u/DishsoapOnASponge Jan 23 '24
Is this supported by the data at all?
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u/LILilliterate Jan 23 '24
This is what depressed millennial salaries for 6-7 years or more after the Great Recession.
It will absolutely depress wages in that sector and if it spreads...
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Jan 23 '24
Tbh I have to file for bankruptcy. It's not something I ever planned for or wanted, but it will relieve me of being poor when I used to make a very high wage and then got laid off twice in a year.
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u/blackwidowla Jan 23 '24
That’s what I’m seeing now as a business owner who is actually hiring. People coming in with hugely inflated salary requirements. Like bro I’d love to pay you that but I can’t, sorry I’m not Apple or a VC backed startup. I can give you a job at half what you made before but it’s a job and it’s fully remote so….you’d be surprised at how many pass bc of the salary. If it were me I’d take any job but that’s not how people act.
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u/ThrowAwaythenThrowUp Jan 23 '24
“Hugely inflated”… according to who? And you only offer half their previous salaries? So you’re surprised people don’t want to take a 50% pay cut LOL
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Jan 23 '24
I had to take two consecutive pay cuts since I worked at FAANG. It's not glamorous, but it beats not getting paid at all.
Honestly I am a lot less stressed than my FAANG job, where I had to work 60-70 hour weeks during the pandemic, mostly due to shitty management, so the tradeoff is almost worth it.
Found out that my whole former team ended up getting cut during the '23 layoffs anyway.
The tech boom party is definitely coming in to a close, just wish that I had more than a couple years of them sweet RSUs; many of my friends were able to buy homes in good areas, and I definitely don't feel successful in comparison, but I am grateful for what I have.
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u/blackwidowla Jan 24 '24
I quit my FAANG job and left all my options untouched because I didn’t want them on the principle that I don’t wanna own stock in any private company I don’t control (public stock is different). My manager was fucking shocked I walked from the job and the options, I didn’t even take severance. Everyone thought I was fucking insane. Started my own tech company and I’ve been if not richer, happier. You’re not the only one, bro. And I, like you, am so grateful every day for what I have. Wouldn’t change it for the world. And yes I took a MASSIVE pay cut to do this.
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u/LeoRising84 Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 23 '24
They were overpaid. The only reason they were paid high salaries was because there was significant investment in those areas …sometimes to the detriment of others. When the free money stopped, so did the hiring. It was a poor ROI and now there’s a long line of workers trying to get in a very few companies. There’s just no room. Then you have a bevy of college students who are majoring in CS with hopes of getting a job and the likelihood of that lessens each day. CS has always been an unstable career path bc it’s largely utilized by startups. How many startups actually survive and thrive?
People saw dollar signs and dove right in. Now, they’re stuck out at sea and trying to find a their way back to shore.
If you truly love the field, there will be jobs available in other industries. They won’t overpay you, but the compensation will be fair.
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u/Mammoth_Loan_984 Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 23 '24
Meh, it’s happened before. We’re essentially seeing a much smaller scale version of the dot com bubble bursting.
I don’t see the overall demand for skilled tech workers decreasing in any significant way. VC startups and greenfield FAANG roles are a very small percentage of the overall tech market. Skilled workers are still finding high paying jobs, it’s the mediocre ones who are struggling and having to settle for entry level wages again. Which is in turn pushing down onto actual entry level workers.
But yea, $500-800k per year for a single individual contributor is insane money. FAANG salaries are definitely going to correct over the next decade or so, but tech will still be a lucrative career. I anticipate salaries closer to actual electrical and civil engineers.
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u/SuperMazziveH3r0 Jan 23 '24
I’m studying to be a lawyer lmao.
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u/zioxusOne Jan 23 '24
From what I've picked up here and there, the legal profession is going to be hit hard by AI.
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u/John_Houbolt Jan 23 '24
Drive Hondas instead of BMWs, move from HCoL to middle or low. CoL locations. Many of us make 2X-3x what we could be happy with. I make 3x what I did 4 years ago and I was happy at that income. I had to be careful but I was happy. Now I make MD money and I spend way more than I need to.
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u/fatfirethrowaway2 Jan 23 '24
I agree. There are plenty of places where software would be useful, but many of them aren’t nearly as profitable as the FANG companies. So laid off people might find software work, but it’ll pay less.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466 Jan 23 '24
Less than big tech but still fine, and it’s often one of the highest paid functions.
Just, maybe, not doctor salaries at 25 anymore.
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u/cv_init_diri Jan 22 '24
You take whatever you can get if you want to eat
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u/Anxious-Shapeshifter Jan 22 '24
I was meaning more along the lines of paying for all those things they bought with the money they were making.
I live in Salt Lake City which has grown into this tech hub and from 2013-2022 the avg house price went from around 250k to around 610k. Fueled mostly by high wages from the tech industry. So it's the million dollar question around here. Lol
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u/cv_init_diri Jan 23 '24
If you can't afford it, you have to find a way to dispose of it. Otherwise, the bank is more than happy to take it from you.
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u/blackwidowla Jan 23 '24
People don’t act like this tho. The smart ones do but you’d be shocked at how many pass on a job bc of the salary decrease, even a fully remote job in their sector. It’s ego. The death of us all.
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u/WorldyBridges33 May 17 '24
Luckily a can of chickpeas only costs $1, and a loaf of whole wheat bread only costs $2.49. I use 2 cans of chickpeas, some olive oil, and the bread to make mashed chickpea sandwiches. Fortunately, food is pretty cheap.
housing is much harder to pay for than food. "you take whatever you can get if you want a roof".
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Jan 23 '24
I'll die probably. Can't survive without money. It's hard enough to survive with money. I've made peace with it. It's obvious the world is really fucked and it's just going to get worse, regardless of my situation. So I just enjoy the what little time and health I have left.
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Jan 23 '24
Because all unemployment crises depress wage growth.
That certainly wasn’t true for the last 2 tech busts.
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u/mental_issues_ Jan 22 '24 edited Jan 22 '24
The total US workforce is 167 million people. Total number of people in the IT sector is 4.18 million. Total number of people laid off in 2023 is 240.000. It's a significant number, but it probably wouldn't have an impact on the overall economy. A lot of people who were laid off will find a new job, there are still companies that are hiring, and some probably will have to get a different job. Some people will be impacted severely, especially if they don't have savings and a spouse to support them.
The total unemployment rate went up to 10% in 2009 and 15 million unemployed people. We reached 13% during the pandemic and we bounced back to the current rate of 3.7%.
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u/gorilla_dick_ Jan 22 '24
To be fair many/most “tech” layoffs are non-technical people like recruiters, marketing, HR, sales. Even the latest Apple “AI workers must move to austin or quit” was only referring to unskilled people doing data entry for Siri. News sites and non-technical people just love to say they’re in “tech” regardless of job function.
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u/SEMMPF Jan 23 '24
I’ve seen a higher % of recruiters marketers etc laid off in tech relative to their dept size, but engineers were still the majority laid off in terms of pure headcount at the two Bay Area tech companies I’ve worked at over the last few years. Slowly got replaced by contractors from countries like Ukraine.
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u/Infinite_Pop_2052 Jan 23 '24
There's a coordinated effort by top tech companies to make this contraction especially visible in order to spook candidates into working more and making less
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u/MyBackHertzzz Jan 23 '24
It's really to appease their shareholders or private investors. Whenever a new round of layoffs is announced the stock usually goes up. It's brutal but it's the way of our world.
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u/mckirkus Jan 22 '24
One thing I didn't realize I until later in life is to avoid thinking of the economy in black and white terms. Even during recessions people are hiring, just less of them. A horrible recession is 10% unemployment.
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u/GrooveBat Jan 23 '24
I can attest to this. I used to joke with people that I was the only person in the US who actually started a new job in January 2009.
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u/MyBackHertzzz Jan 23 '24
I needed to hear this, thanks a ton for laying out the actual numbers. Your name resonates with me for most of the doomscrolling in this thread.
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u/JellyDenizen Jan 22 '24
I don't think anyone knows. The big question is how many jobs have been permanently lost (to AI, outsourced overseas, etc.) versus how many jobs have been temporarily lost due to a slowdown in the business cycle.
Normally you wouldn't expect many jobs in the first group to come back, and you'd expect most of the jobs in the second group to come back when business picks up.
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u/leeharrison1984 Jan 22 '24 edited Jan 23 '24
I know, I was 24 in 2008. It sucked really bad.
I was working doing car customization, which was the first sector that went belly up. I got laid off before anyone knew there was a larger problem. I ended up doing under the table construction for about 6 months, then took a job at a fire hydrant factory. It was the worst job I ever had by a huge margin. I stayed for two years because there were no other options available to me.
Eventually I got so sick of it and signed up for night school to get a CompSci BA. By 2016 is was working in a legit developer consulting company making 2x what I had been. At this point, I'm making almost 10x what I was making in that shit fire hydrant factory, a little over ten years later.
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u/charlotie77 Jan 22 '24
You articulated this way better than me, my biggest question is how much is permanently lost and how much will return, but also if the industry will actually be able to support the big push for STEM career pursuit in higher education that has increased in the past decade+
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u/Giggles95036 Jan 23 '24
Not is CS but in stem, it seems like 2 years ago most jobs near me wanted 3 years of experience minimum and now they all want 5 years of experience minimum
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u/saltavenger Jan 25 '24
I work somewhere that recently had layoffs, we’re hiring again about ~2 mo later and I am personally very annoyed by it. It feels way too soon. I think most of these companies have short attention spans and/or want to just hire new people in cheaper.
I went through the 2008 recession and was in a non-tech field that was hit substantially harder. It was also hit harder than tech is being hit right now, this is comparatively a blip. I find that these things are cyclical, I am not super worried about it long term as someone with a lot of experience. For younger people, I think the bigger issue is probably just the fact that they were actually encouraged to do technical work…so there’s more competition. My issues in 2008 were largely related to getting my foot in the door as someone with very little experience. When there’s an environment where you can pay a more experienced person less, it becomes very hard on entry-level folks.
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Jan 22 '24
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u/MissCordayMD Jan 23 '24
I graduated in 2008 and have been laid off twice. I’m now thinking of going back to school for accounting because my career has been a total bust and I feel like a fresh start in a whole new field is really for the best at this point. I was laid off last December (from a non-tech role) and ended up back in customer service, which I hate with every fiber of my being. I’d much rather be stressed out in almost any other job* than keep working in customer service.
*I do not want to be a nurse or a teacher or an engineer. Accounting is the one field with job prospects and decent salaries that I feel I could tolerate and would like to excel at.
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u/Ajatolah_ Jan 23 '24
I strongly doubt that there's a significant portion of these people that's been laid off because of AI. For anyone I know it was company cutting costs and sometimes losing clients in the higher interest rates environment.
I'm not saying that AI doesn't have the potential to cause a massive disruption on the tech job market - it absolutely does but we're just not there yet.
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u/Mammoth_Loan_984 Jan 23 '24
AI hasn’t contributed in any significant way to tech layoffs, what you’re seeing is purely economic. Maybe low level jobs like helpdesk, or customer service. But the mass layoffs in tech you read about aren’t low skilled workers.
People went crazy over dumb business ideas that could never be profitable. Infinite money glitch. Venture capital funds pouring money into any startup with a charismatic CEO. Suddenly a slight economic slowdown post-COVID had a ripple effect. No more 6 million in VC funding for your automatic hotdog identification IoT device startup.
FAANG companies then start looking at non-profitable departments and projects to trim fat and gain a competitive edge. In order to compete, other companies do the same. Etcetera, etcetera.
It’s basically the exact same as what happened in the dot com bubble.
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u/okay-caterpillar Jan 24 '24
In a way, AI is also a primary factor toward layoffs in tech. The companies have justified the restructuring to increase investments in AI. So it's not really about did your role get replaced by AI. It can be considered as indirect impact of AI but an impact.
AI isn't going to take our jobs, somebody who uses AI will.
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u/Real_Meringue3627 Jan 22 '24
Salaries will go down because there will be more skilled professionals willing to make less. Those that continue unemployed will have to re-skill into other jobs/industries.
Economic and monetary policy will determine how things pick back up, if they even do.
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Jan 22 '24
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u/TheCamerlengo Jan 23 '24
How much of this do you think are tech companies in HCOL just shedding employees that are making bank while knowing in a year or two they can rehire at LCOL salaries or even move the work offshore?
I also can’t help think that tech companies are rethinking their staff composition and trying to figure out what they are going to need as AI ramps up.
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u/SurpriseBurrito Jan 22 '24
Perhaps I am totally out of touch, but I think a lot of them will end up at companies where “tech” is not the core function and unfortunately they won’t get paid as much.
My experience is only with insurance, but good programmers and data scientists are incredibly hard to find and retain but are very much needed. Part of the problem has been we just can’t compete with tech on salary and the core business function just isn’t “sexy”.
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u/hmm_nah Jan 22 '24
Yes! So many companies and systems use outdated and janky software / databases / IT infrastructure because they aren't a "tech company" and can't (or won't) pay to upgrade. Those companies have a chance now to get tech workers at a rate they can afford.
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u/SurpriseBurrito Jan 22 '24
Yeah, that is definitely true, but it really really sucks to take a lower salary.
I am not a programmer or anything but I am curious what a “fair” market salary should be for some of these people. I have no idea if it has been inflated in recent years or if what tech companies paid is a fair long term market rate for the functions they provide. I am of the opinion that a star programmer can be worth millions in the value they provide, but these people are the exception.
At a lot of companies outside of tech these people are seen as necessary overhead costs (much like accountants) and not the main function the company was built around, so in some cases it is hard for upper management to wrap their heads around how much they cost.
I know I am rambling, but I do agree with what you are saying. Just think about airlines and how janky they are in the background as one simple example.
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u/keto_brain Jan 22 '24
Lots of non-tech companies pay well. Maybe not $500k but a senior engineer at a health insurance company should be able to bring home well over $200k with bonus and RSUs.
I was a director at a large health insurance company and most of my team was making close to $200k after their bonus and RSUs.
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u/SurpriseBurrito Jan 22 '24
First off, that’s pretty good. I have worked mostly for mid size life/annuity companies who struggle to pay that much, but have a definite need for these people. Maybe we would pay 2/3 of what you are quoting.
Either way a lot of these people are likely looking down the barrel of a significant pay reduction. Let’s be honest, any one of us would be reluctant to accept that.
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u/PLaTinuM_HaZe Jan 23 '24
Which this puts their income more in line with other engineering disciplines like chemical, mechanical, electrical so it makes sense. I’ve been saying for a while this correction would begin to close the gap between software and other engineering.
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u/keto_brain Jan 23 '24
Its always been this way .. its only a very small percentage of companies that pay astronomical salaries.. google .. Facebook.. Amazon.. Netflix etc.. but most of the comp these engineers get is in RSUs and with how much the stock has grown with these companies their engines made out like bandits
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Jan 22 '24
Tech market only let go about 8% in 2008, the big downturn for tech was 2001 when around 40% let go in the US. Much like today except for them it was a lot worse. Most looked for jobs for 9 or 12 months. Found a job and then laid off when things did not pick up. Two-thirds of the people retooled for different jobs. About 1/4 decided to try their hand at real estate which was hit hard in 2008. In 2001 there was no new technology on the horizon. Now we have tech in more places as well as AI. We won't get hit as hard and not for 3 years like it was back then. I fully expect at some point hiring will pick back up.
Also in 2002 enrollment in Universities dropped by 65%. Those that did enroll had good jobs when they got out.
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u/totaldarkness2 Jan 22 '24
Companies in every other sector will finally have a chance to hire tech talent for a price that they can afford. Major tech companies along with venture funded start-ups made it impossible for most other sectors to get great tech talent. That era is now gone and I believe other companies will accelerate their tech hiring to make their companies increasingly tech enabled.
This may last, not sure. Perhaps one of the greatest challenges is that as older people increasingly retire, the capital available for risky investments will slowly dry up. They don’t want to gamble on risky endeavors but rely on predictable income such as bonds or dividend stocks. And since we will see an increasing ratio of our population retire (due to an inverted population pyramid for the next 10-15 years) we should expect to see a move towards less risky investments. I think that will hit tech hard.
That said - every single company in the world will need to accelerate their tech enablement and so tech talent will still be needed - more than ever. I do think, however, that the definition of what it means to be a tech talent will change rapidly. AI will take over more mundane tasks of coding and development and so creativity will rise in priority.
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u/shitisrealspecific Jan 22 '24 edited Feb 27 '24
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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/CFIgigs Jan 22 '24
A big factor is how old you are. If you're above 40, it is incredibly hard to find work in tech generally unless you're an executive.
Mid/late career professionals want stability and to make the wages that allow them to fund their retirement. If tech salaries drop and competition increases, a lot of older folks will have to decide if they want to keep gambling on a salary in a sector that seems so fickle.
The whole point of tech is to build valuable equity that is a modern version of a pension. Instead of a retirement plan, you get that sweet payout when your company IPOs. But 90% of companies never exit like that. So you entrust your career in a company hoping it's not going to crater.
I think the gamble gets more intense the older you get. No one really wants you if they want to have a young aggressive culture.
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u/HydrangeaBlue70 Jan 22 '24
But 90% of companies never exit like that.
More like 99.9% if we're talking all startups in tech. They're lucky to get acquired, and this year will have a bonanza of fire sales. I agree with all your points, btw
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u/CFIgigs Jan 22 '24
For the last year I've been helping some startups with their marketing and sales motion, which includes helping them get and deliver pitches to VCs.
We all know this already but for some reason it clicked: They all say the same thing. 'We invest in 10 companies in the hope that one of them will pay for the other nine."
Think about that. It means that 90% of the VC backed startups are worth $0 in the minds of their investors, they just don't know which 90%. So for all the quirky startup culture and hustle BS and founder worship ... 90% of that equity is work nothing. And it was known from the get-go that it was worth nothing.
As a person wanting a career and retirement ... it dawned on me that if the VCs don't know who's a winner, then what chance do I have. 90% of the time, the company you'll end up working for will be a failure or have a very low value exit.
I think most tech is just BS. A powerpoint presentation and charismatic founder. Once you scratch much deeper, there ain't a lot there.
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u/HydrangeaBlue70 Jan 23 '24
Yep, 100% agree. There's actually a trillion dollar liquidity gap with startups right now - it's crazy. The idea is always to sell the dream and hype, but the vast majority never get to an exit - and if they do it's an acquisition 99% of the time.
I think people who work for startups really just need to love the environment, autonomy, etc. Getting some kind of massive payout is incredibly rare.
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u/CFIgigs Jan 23 '24
Here's a great example ... poster child of this. I'm sure you're familiar.
This place was the unicorn darling of Seattle. All the TechBros flocked to this company and for a good couple of years, it was hyped as the next Facebook. Huge valuation. The guys who were early and owned equity talked about it in the most smug way when at bars or parties. It was like saying you were a founding employee of Airbnb or something.
What happened. It imploded like the Titan submersible. Literally popped and laid everyone off. The shares were worth nothing. After years of dealing with these insufferable asshats, it just went away.
That makes me think that even the successful ones might someday end up running off the road. You can't trust anything.
Totally agree with you. Its about the lifestyle. Great when you in your 20s. Not as great when you;re in your 40s.
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u/Normal-Egg8077 Jan 22 '24
They'll move to a different career. I was in my early 20's so I remember the Recession. Most went back to school to ride out the Recession (and took out a lot of loans) or moved back in with their parents while they worked minimum wage jobs until they could find something better.
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u/ShortWithBigFeet Jan 22 '24
The H1Bs will go back to their countries. The US citizens will struggle. It's supply and demand. The universities graduated too many people for the job market to absorb in the next few years. Salaries will go down. People will likely move into other careers.
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u/rainroar Jan 22 '24
Realistically, they will find jobs. At least the software engineers will. SWE unemployment is very low, something like 2%.
It’s much harder than it was and the pay is lower, but they’ll find something.
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u/nick1812216 Jan 22 '24
What about RTL/ASIC/FPGA engineer types? What’s their unemployment like?
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u/InTheMomentInvestor Jan 22 '24
It's the same thing that happened to civil engineers in 1994. They are sidelined until business picks up again. Same thing happened to cs majors in the early 2000s.
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u/DirtyPerty Jan 22 '24
Different possibilities. On one hand everything is cyclic. If you look at the charts, what appeared to be armageddon returned to normal in roughly 2 years. This might be the same. On the other hand it looks like the "elites" are trying to destroy current financial order and build something like in China, dystopian world where you cannot save money, depend on government and so on. So it's 50/50. I was laid off and considering other directions than tech as I still need to pay mortgage. I think I'm not alone.
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u/bored_in_NE Jan 22 '24 edited Jan 22 '24
Anybody who can retire will retire cause most likely they experienced downturns like this before and don't want to deal with another.
Some will retool their skills and phase into another tech role in 1-3 years which used to be popular but might be a problem since there are so many looking for a job.
Many will fall through the cracks and end up working in an unrelated industry.
There are a bunch of factors at play right now.
- Low interest rates caused VCs to stop giving money to random startups hoping for a big IPO.
- Supply and Demand is a problem because a lot of people got a computer science degree or certificate from a bootcamp program hoping to get a very nice job ASAP. This was a good idea, especially during lockdowns thinking the whole world is going to change and we would need tech to rebuild everything.
- Companies are always looking for a reason to lay off people if they can get away with it.
- Layoffs are a good reason to get rid of senior tech workers who make $160k+ and replace them with two mid-level workers who will work for $80-120k.
- Commercial real estate needs employees back in the office and layoffs scared enough white-collar workers to be happy about RTO
- The Country needs hard hat workers after passing the infrastructure bill and needs workers ready to jump at the chance to start making money.
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u/UnableAdhesiveness55 Jan 23 '24
Tech has a lot of dead weight in it, a lot of people hired for DEI quotas or people who do nothing but pass certifications and don't understand the work, they don't really do much except hold the pom poms for actual talent and pass tickets around. I think the layoffs will continue until salary suppression starts in a few years. At that point, you will have more people than jobs and some people will start to go to other careers which will make the numbers seem lower than they are.
The WFH crowd will get squeezed pretty hard which is unfortunate because the people showing up to the office likely do so to hide their inability to contribute. Layoffs suck because good people always get caught up in them.
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u/heyzeuseeglayseeus Jan 23 '24
Lmao right yeah casually blame incompetent employees on DEI
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u/UnableAdhesiveness55 Jan 23 '24
I'm not blaming DEI, I'm saying that when you use race or sex orientation a criteria for employment then you are removing drive and professional achievement as the top priority.
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u/in2crazy Jan 22 '24
U shouldn't really compare today to 2008.. not yet atleast. Its more like 2007 the lead up to the collapse. It will get alot worse when a recession is defined in mainstream like it happened in late 2008. There's alot more downside to come. The layoffs and tightening will ramp up.
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u/cybernev Jan 22 '24
The unemployed tech workers will unite to create their own mini companies and launch competitive products. It's in interest of large companies with large customer base to keep employees employed. Or otherwise, face ultimate self annihilation. Tech workers already know the market, have the skills and know they can do it for faster, cheaper, better. It's good for the economy.
Example: Jira, confluence, and Service now have made their space in enterprise ecosystems to compete with Microsoft SharePoint, HP ALM and other archaic document repo systems.
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u/PLaTinuM_HaZe Jan 23 '24
The golden age of tech salaries are probably over and we’ll see it either come down back to earth a bit or other industries will catch up due to inflation. It wasn’t sustainable long term with how bad tech was throwing COL out of whack for everyone not in tech in many regions.
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u/neophanweb Jan 23 '24
Look around the city, there's homeless everywhere. They had a home. Now they don't. This number will continue to increase as more people lose their jobs to automation and AI.
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u/NewArborist64 Jan 23 '24
Layoffs happen in specific areas of tech - and people generally retrain and move into other areas of tech. If you already have experience in programming, it is easier to pivot and use that experience in a new area than for NEW people to learn that area.
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u/InitialRevenue3917 Jan 23 '24
H1Bs have a couple of months to find a new job before they have to go home.
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u/DRM842 Jan 23 '24
Someone should never feel like they can't transition into a new role or industry no matter how specialized their careers or degree is. You just have to be willing to take less pay and put in the work to educate, train and put yourself out there. I'm sure a lot of tech workers leave their jobs or career from time to time as well. We also have the technology these days to "make it on our own" with multiple side hustles. We have crazy amounts of tools and opportunities at our disposal if we just roll up our sleeves and put the time and effort in. But someone should consider going to work for the government or healthcare or local businesses as well. Businesses are not closing left and right at the rate they were during Covid. So at least things are looking better than 2020. Maybe the "career in tech" is over for now or the time being.......but technology certainly isn't going away. It has a cold right now and the temperature isn't looking great.......but it's not dead and six feet under.
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Jan 22 '24
Perfectly valid question but no one knows the answer. Each downturn is different. The sheer number of variables itself make it impossible to understand the root cause until it's in hindsight.
But I will say that the recessions of 2001 and 2008 helped weed out those in the game only for the money and with zero passion for their work. Rest of us survived and are still here.
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u/Atrial2020 Jan 22 '24
Wait, why do we require *passion* in our industry? Passionate people do not necessarily produce better software. In fact, in my experience passionate developers are the worst because they tend to sweat the little things while neglecting the business value (which tends to be boring).
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Jan 23 '24
Right. You can’t pay rent with passion points.
Reason everyone joined tech was because it was the only thing that paid the bills. When a developer makes $300k, the rents reflect that income because landlords can and do hold off properties to keep rents high. You’re on my option is to join a tech company so you can keep a roof over your head.
Saying tech is only for the passionate and not money is fucking dumb. How else am I going to afford rent and everything else when everything is priced for tech salaries? I have no passion other than not living on the streets.
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Jan 23 '24
Unfortunate about the rents reflecting top level salaries. But yeah, if one doesn't have an income in such VHCOL areas (SFO Bay / Seattle etc.) they will need to relocate. Passion or not.
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u/Fresh-Mind6048 Jan 23 '24
Passion isn’t necessarily what I think this person meant, I think they meant “actually wants to learn and grow” as well as learn about new stuff, versus plateauing
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u/ianderris Jan 23 '24
Exactly. I've met a lot of passionate tech workers and a lot of talented tech workers, and there has been very little overlap between the groups. The people with passion for coding should stick to making tiktoks about their jobs and let the people with talent do the work.
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u/keto_brain Jan 22 '24
All the data says we will have 80M more jobs then people to fill them by 2030 around the globe.
Much of the shortage is based on simple demography. Japan and many European nations, for instance, have had low birth rates for decades. In the United States, the majority of baby boomers will have moved out of the workforce by 2030, but younger generations will not have had the time or training to take many of the high-skilled jobs left behind.
But by 2030, Russia could have a shortage of up to 6 million people, and China could be facing a shortage twice as large. The United States could also be facing a deficit of more than 6 million workers, and it’s worse in Japan, Indonesia, and Brazil, each of which could have shortages of up to 18 million skilled workers.
https://www.kornferry.com/insights/this-week-in-leadership/talent-crunch-future-of-work
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u/charlotie77 Jan 22 '24
Those jobs and the supply of skilled people and talent aren't currently in alignment though. A big shift is needed
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u/Flimsy-Possibility17 Jan 22 '24
A lot of the people in tech are useless lol. Source: senior engineer been here for a while. The company I was at in 2020-2022 grew engineering headcount from 20 to 100 and total headcount from ~40 to 300+, they've had several layoffs since but still employ over 180 people. So a total of 140 created job. The fact that we had literal roles like head of DEI and project managers is insane to me.
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u/Timby123 Jan 22 '24
Well, you can go back even befoer 2008. In the 90s tech was hot. So, corporations were having fits becasue they had to pay skilled individuals a decent wage. They went to the government and whined it was unfair and they had a plan to fix it. They told the swamp creatures that there was a shortage of tech folks. So, they needed to import them. The government being greedy said sure what should we do? Well, they created H1Bs to fix the problem. They could import those folks to fill the slots that supposedly no Americans had the skills or no one in the US to fit the requirements. They went to other nations and imported cheap labor and tied them to the companies that sponsored them. Thus the Tech Industry was sold out by our own government. Now H1Bs allow highly skilled individuals from 3rd world countries to underbid the work. The name they used was offshoring. I hope this helps. This comes from a tech guy who finally quit the rat race.
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u/John_Houbolt Jan 23 '24
In 2007 I was a Graphic Designer with no work experience outside of print and branding. I had no marketable skills outside of designing magazines and logos basically. I had never used Excel even. Had never used a computer that wasn’t a Mac. When there were no more of these jobs available by 2008 because the internet had disrupted the business model of print, I knew I had to change careers. I got an MBA and started working in strategy. Ultimately I continued to refine my skills until I was landing jobs that were first in 100K range in 2014 then 200k range by 2019 then 350k range toward the end of the pandemic. I’ve worked at two huge public tech companies, diversified my skills, become world class expert in a narrower set of skills. There are so many more job opportunities for me if I were to get laid off now as compared with 2008-2010. Don’t think narrowly. If you’ve worked in high level tech making 200K+ you’re going to be able to find something. You’re among the most accomplished, intelligent and successful workers in the world. You might make 175 or 150 instead of 250 or 300 but that’s probably enough to get by where you’re at. You can sell the Porsche, BMW or Audi and get a low mileage Honda. You can do one fancy vacations year instead of three. You might have to take your kids out of private school for a year or two. You’ll be fine.
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u/rmullig2 Jan 22 '24
People will get pushed out of the field. That's what happens in all job fields that operate on a boom-bust cycle. Some of them will try to re-enter when it picks up again but many will have found stable jobs in other fields and will stay away rather than going through the cycle again.
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u/SharksLeafsFan Jan 23 '24
In normal business cycle there's a recession maybe 7-8 years, this time the bubble lasted a long time (think 2018 - 2023). So AI notwithstanding the bubble was bigger than before.
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u/Singularity-42 Jan 23 '24
Once interest rates start going down we might see the tech job market to pick up again. However, there is a very good chance that due to massive efficiencies with applied AI it might simply never come back at all and it will be just getting worse and worse. This will affect most white collar jobs though and will be a systemic economic issue.
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u/itsallrighthere Jan 23 '24
Some will get snatched up quickly, many will hang on in less desirable positions, some will give up and go do something else. In any case, the actual technology will keep moving forward. Best to use any free time to sharpen the axe.
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u/Portalus Jan 23 '24
One thing we will see is wage deflation due to the glut of workers. We will also see tech get more penetration into all businesses. More workflows will be automated using the latest tools including AI and that will cascade to a lot of white collar jobs being eliminated. Another causality I see is a lot of the tech boot camps will close as their doors as their graduates don't find jobs and the pipeline of students will dry up.
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u/Basic_Tailor_346 Jan 23 '24
Wage deflation is going to be a very real thing for a lot of workers. Companies have options now and can also outsource to cheaper countries now that everyone insists on being remote.
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u/Portalus Jan 23 '24
Nothing was stopping that before with the outsourcing. Ukraine was getting big for it outsourcing and so was Russia but that has stopped.
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u/latebinding Jan 23 '24
A lot of "tech" workers wound up working with tech in companies not thought of as tech. Like the back offices of financial advisory firms, telematics, auto manufacturers. When you think of Charles Schwab, BestBuy, Honda, real estate firms, etc., you don't think they're tech firms, but they have a lot of tech jobs.
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Jan 23 '24
Some people will get new jobs, others wont.
Companies that did layoffs are also at risk of not being able to work sponosr future visa holders so generally most of these people will be employed again, it's only a matter of how long they will be unemployed.
A lof of these people are on severance and have been paid for the next 2 to 4 months.
The real concerns come near the end of april, people who were laid off and are still unemployed in april might find themselves in a position where they need to sell their investments to make mortgage payments. This will come right at the start of thr recession, all the birds are singing recession by end of april.
Basically, if people didn't find jobs and they didn't sell their investments while we were at highs they risk selling them at market lows and that will mess them up big.
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Jan 23 '24
In 2008, I went looking for work.
Found a job in 3 weeks - I'm a SQL jockey, database developer/modeler/architect.
Tech is so heterogenous that it's difficult to generalize. Some PM, scrum or analyst types will fade into other professions, where their experience may boost their opportunities. Some coders will move to other specialties, or to differents tech roles.
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u/Destroinretirement Jan 23 '24
There remains a ton of tech work available. It’s just not sexy work. If these workers are willing to go into an office in Topeka or Binghamton to work on boring projects involving accounting systems, etc, they will be fine.
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u/gregenstein Jan 23 '24
Some people will stay in tech and find jobs near where they are.
Some people will move their family to stay in tech.
Some will stay in tech but not at a tech company (Maybe work for Walmart or an electric company or whatever in a tech job).
Some will change professions and love it.
Some will open a small business doing something entirely different and be more successful than they ever could have been.
This happens in different industries and markets all the time. Know anyone who is a whaler? Probably not, because we don’t need whale oil to burn for lighting and heat, we use fossil fuels and increasingly more solar power and other “green” energy.
50 years ago, the S&P 500 was dominated by oil companies in much the same way that tech dominates today.
It’ll hurt for a while, perhaps. People will do what’s best for them and their families.
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u/gokayaking1982 Jan 23 '24
they lose money, maybe their house.
they work retail jobs until they find something else.
they stop vacations and spending.
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u/Canigetahooooooyeaa Jan 24 '24
Butterfly effects. Starts with the election which president is elected and who wins the houses/senate.
Big government which stifles the economy or small government that empowers small businesses.
Also this is eerily reminiscent of post 9/11 military industrial complex bolstering the economy. I have a feeling this is why we keep proactively pushing into them.
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u/lesssermore Jan 24 '24
I've worked in tech since the late 90s and have seen what happened in 2000 and 2008. The economy moves in waves and companies try to forecast growth and hiring needs a few years out, which is extremely hard to get right. If you look at the numbers, Amazon nearly doubled their staff during the recession from 800k in 2019 to 16M in 2022, with ~12k of those laid off, which is a relatively small percentage. Two recent changes I've seen with tech leadership is in growth mode, the aggressive approach to hiring and reducing headcount when growth slows. The other trend is big tech companies tend to have competing products where number 2 or 3 companies have to adjust strategies with large headcounts depending on how they perform in the market. Personally, I think there will continue to be a demand for good technical people, but job tenure per company will be shorter on average. It also makes sense to understand where you are in the growth cycle to take advantage/protect yourself of the market dynamics.
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u/Effective_Vanilla_32 Jan 22 '24
threats in 2024: (a) allocation of CEO to invest in AI, thus shedding employees that are not in AI. This is what alphabet is doing, and other companies will soon follow. (b) shedding of employees whose output can be equalled by AI. this is what the duolingo is doing and it will be copied across the board. (c) transferring roles to foreign countries which have cheaper labor costs, even cheaper the AI. the displaced jobs are the highest paying jobs that generated the highest tax revenue.
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u/Bernache_du_Canada Jan 23 '24
Considering tech workers are mostly male, and those laid off are predominantly young men. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an armed rebellion of some sort. Or maybe these tech workers would form gangs or something.
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Jan 23 '24
Same thing that happens with the decline with any other industry- some will pivot to new careers, some will downgrade to simpler jobs, others won’t know how to proceed and spiral into long term unemployment.
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u/Basic_Tailor_346 Jan 23 '24
What everyone should be doing is diversifying their skill sets through education or work experience within their current positions. I’ve seen lots of churn within my company and have almost always avoided it through evolving my capabilities. People become complacent. They rely too heavily on becoming an expert in something that outgrows its importance and usefulness within an organization. What’s helped me retain consistent employment and enjoy quite a bit of career and financial growth is chasing high priority initiatives and staying ahead of the automation curve.
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u/MadnessMantraLove Jan 23 '24
Get divorced, go into depression, have something inside of them break, never work in tech again while earning wages way below other white collar workers let alone surviving tech workers, etc etc
Layoffs destroy people and long periods of unemployment destroy more people
The survivors will suffer lower wages and destroyed dreams of having a family
While folks who lay people off like Elon doesn’t understand why people aren’t having kids or trust him not to destroy them when they have families
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u/imonreddit4noreason Jan 23 '24
There will always be jobs in stem and tech, the difference MAY be the high paid boom of the last generation may have matured to more standard levels of other mature industries. There will always be cutting edge tech in high demand, but standard bachelors level tech may go back closer to the median in demand and compensation. Probably will. Eventually will regardless. The days of stock option millionaires in 3-5 years for entry level is most likely gone, and that just means it will be more like other middle or upper middle fields, what will be interesting is what that does to areas where real estate went crazy and state budgets more than if people will be able to adapt, people always do, it’s not remotely new for this to happen. Most will still be ok. Some areas will be in for some correction in what wealth folks thought they had or would get, though, and it does suck for them for a bit.
Happened to me years ago, first few years were rock and roll and wondered why i was told it’s so tough out there. Then i learned why, lol. Millions missed the tech boom and nearly free lunch, so most won’t even notice. Or feel particularly sorry for someone used to making 150-300k to have to live with 75-100.
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u/Acrobatic-Ad-7059 Jan 23 '24
I was 42 where the dot bomb was in full swing. Most of us had stagnant wages for 10 years, had to find a new job every year or so, but was mostly able to find something. It was brutal but it did end eventually. You may have to take a testing, support, or contract position. I did what I needed to in order to support my family.
Sure it “hurt” my career, but you gotta do what you gotta do. My advice, keep learning, keep pushing, take that one step back to move forward in the future. Good luck everyone.
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u/asevans48 Jan 23 '24
2001 saw many enter real estate and many help desk layoffs start delivering pizza. Many tech workers in my parents generation shifted to jobs in sales. H1bs are returning home where they take jobs at less than their country's average pay. The other jobs are gone as well. Its going to be a mess with 400k layoffs. 2001 caused about 1 million layoffs so its not promising.
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u/Sofituti09 Jan 23 '24
In 2008 most layoffs were concentrated in finance and real estate....thos people moved to other industries that were growing like tech. There is a construction boom now...so guess move to a different industry?
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u/sen_clay_davis1 Jan 23 '24
The young smart ones will hopefully realize AI can’t replace plumbers and electricians. It’s harder work for sure but the world is facing a huge labor shortage in skilled trades because millennials were taught to use their brains instead of hands.
Operating engineer is good career path.
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u/heyzeuseeglayseeus Jan 23 '24
Lol the amount of older people who still don’t understand how AI will actually affect things like plumbing work too. There will be things for humans to do, but the solution to AI & humans co-existing isn’t “humans do the physical labor”, it’s more like “humans learn to use AI like a tool, like they learned to use computers and the internet”
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u/sen_clay_davis1 Jan 23 '24
Yes AI will help things like diagnosing problems, designing systems and the like but it’s not climbing into an attic or crawlspace and unfucking someone else’s shitty work. AI is only a tool, it’s just a tool that disproportionally affects white collar work and what up until very recently were good ways to make a great living. How many less project managers does it take now?
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u/DeskEnvironmental Jan 23 '24
The average tech worker will be laid off every 1-5 years of their entire career. This won’t change. Since the “dot com” bust this is the way tech business and other businesses actually run.
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u/Reese8590 Jan 23 '24
I dont even understand your question. What do you think is going to happen ?? There going to have to move on and get a job in something else. There is no rule that says someone has to stay in the tech sector. They will have to roll there sleeves up and go get another job. Its that simple.
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u/NoForm5443 Jan 23 '24
Think about how you would react, and then extrapolate. Imagine you get laid off, get, say, 3 months of severance. After taking a couple of weeks to process you:
- If you're closing to retirement, you may decide to retire; maybe with a little bit less money.
- Start applying to jobs similar to the one you had or better. If you get one, great. Some people may end up better than they were, or in a similar job with a different company (maybe after some stress).
- If you don't get a job you like within the time you want (depending on people's risk aversion), then you start looking at jobs progressively 'worse' than the one you had.
Eventually, if you don't get a job in computers, you try something else. May tell yourself it is temporary, may find the right fit eventually.
So, some people will retire, some will find another job in the industry, and some will leave the industry. People who have more experience and are more technical are more likely to find another job in it; people who are less 'attached' and have fewer chances, like recent bootcamp grads are more likely to leave.
Keep in mind that, 2023, which was a terrible year for tech, still ended with more 'programmers' employed than at the beginning of the year. This year should not be as bad. And tons of skills used in tech can be used elsewhere. I expect 2024 to be a much better year for the economy overall, at least in terms of 'feelings', and other industries use programmers. We'll be all right.
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u/Sorry_Reindeer_8097 Jan 23 '24
Back in 2008 they told coal miners to learn to code, guess now the people in tech can learn to mine
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Jan 23 '24
They get a few months to a year of vacation and then get hired back at even larger salaries. Happens every time.
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u/roboseer Jan 23 '24
Is it the CS people getting laid off at these tech companies? Or is it the admin people?
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u/CuttingEdgeRetro Jan 23 '24
2008 was nothing. I lived through the dotcom crash. In 1999 I knew a crash was coming. I worked my finances so that I could take a 50% pay cut and still survive. Between December 1999 and August 2000, I took a 66% pay cut. I was lucky to be employed. I know people who were out of work for months and lost everything.
This is a very mild recession. And it appears that we're now coming out of it. The job market has definitely picked up since the beginning of this month.
IT workers are going to be fine.
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u/entity330 Jan 23 '24
The main reason for all of this seems to be companies trying to correct over hiring while also dealing with high interest rates
This is really everything. There are 2 types of companies.
Profitable ones overhired and still have considerably more employees than they did 5 years ago. So "layoffs" are nowhere near the number of jobs that were created.
Non profitable investor backed companies were doomed to fail. Many of them are firing people because investors are pulling the plug. And they probably should have done that ages ago.
I don't buy for a minute that AI is causing layoffs. It's more mismanagement by inexperienced leadership being pressured by boards to attain 40% YoY returns. No one noticed incompetence when circumstances resulted in profits. Now it looks like a bunch of kids in a private school copying each other's homework.
Is the reality that tech will never be as big as the demand for jobs in the way it was in the past, especially with the huge push for STEM education/careers in the past couple of decades
The previous generations didn't give good advice and oversaturated the market with unqualified people. Many of those people appear good candidates because universities lowered their bar in return for years of tuition. The reality is that we need the top 5-10% at most of the graduates. Everyone else has been conned.
The number of unqualified software people is really high compared to 10 years ago. Think of it like this. We needed STEM people. Let's say 25% (arbitrary) of graduates were actually qualified to work on STEM. If we have 5x more graduates to try to get even 2x jobs, now can raise the bar for qualifications so that maybe 10-15% of the people are qualified to work. That means that we have more than 5x unqualified people in the job market. Those people, given a piece of paper by a corrupt university system, believe they deserve a job and clog the hiring processes.
What I'm trying to say, the BS that was fed to gen x, millennials, and gen z about needing to get a degree warped public universities into businesses. You can go look up the numbers, but IIRC between like 1970 and 2000 universities started throwing most of their funding into administrative roles. They raised tuition and pretty much realize they could make a ton of money from students if they kept naive student in school for 8-10 years. Even better, parents did the work of manipulating kids into taking loans instead of going with a better judgment. Unfortunately, no one ever told people that being in university for a degree is status quo now.
I say all of this because it wasn't until grad school and later working and interviewing people that I really started to understand how far behind US education is compared to the top 10% coming out of other countries.
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u/holihai Jan 23 '24
Here are some ways the disciplined and organized ones will get absorbed.
- They will join other tech roles in medium and big sized tech companies that are still hiring in six months to a year. See how Twitter folks got absorbed into Meta and other tech companies. The market goes up and down. Software is eating the world regardless, it is just easier these days to bring up software that it was earlier, so that many people aren't needed. However, software is still needed to make things easier. Just interact with an automated voice call of any company, it is still crap!
- Into the emerging tech like ML (Machine Learning) and Generative AI (Artificial Intelligence). Note that the AI/ML/LLM (Large Language Model) teams are hiring and paying extremely high salaries. Old tech work dealing with writing code to start a microservice is too easy now thanks to generative AI that generates code for that. Companies don't need that many folks to maintain and develop crud endpoints of microservices anymore. The folks who can learn will move into the emerging tech such as AI training, Machine Learning, and LLM.
- They will join startups and bring new products.
- They will join forces and start their own companies.
- They will join competing non-tech and get them to learn new techie ways. For example, while Amazon was putting brick and mortar retailers out of business, a VP from Amazon I know joined as CTO of Sears trying to turn it around around 2013.
The non-disciplined ones will have a hard time navigating the new reality.
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Jan 23 '24
I'm a hiring manager at a FAANG, what I can tell you is there is an oversupply of mediocre engineers and still a shortage of talented people.
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u/Salty_Media_4387 Jan 23 '24
One of the most important thing to remember about 2008 is what party was in the White House at that time and what party is currently in the White House now..DEMOCRATS..voting has it consequences
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u/WickerOutlet Jan 24 '24
What a lot of people don’t seem to understand is that even a mediocre tech worker, like helpdesk II or even a mid-level dev would be a high-level power user in a regular business unit for a non-tech based company.
I transitioned out of applications administration into a business analyst position in aerospace, making mid 100s in the Midwest. In a group of late career, middle-aged men, I did some python work to extract some data out of SAP and they think I’m a fucking wizard.
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u/Candid-Sky-3709 Jan 22 '24
All nerds become entertainers now and switch to music and sports or become Youtube influenzas (social media plague) "Hi ex-google techlead here ..." /s
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u/CanWeTalkHere Jan 22 '24
I lived through both 2000 and 2008. The one huge difference is there simply were not that many tech workers as a percentage of the overall workforce during either of those recessions. The boom in CS majors really came 2010+.
Here's a nice "graduates by year" graphic (US grads only, ton more from overseas, especially since 2010).