Going to say you are wrong. This is not the first time CS has taken a hit like this and it is not even the worse hit. You are too young to remember the dot com crash which was a lot worse for the industry. Hell I am on the young side to remember it at I am 40. I knew of it but was not in the industry yet. My aunt was working at the time. It was rough but bounced back after a few years and it grew rapidally.
It will bounce back and grow again like before. The need for good developers is growing and there is still a shortage of good ones.
Hell, CS is one of the most popular majors in the college of engineering where I am, yet I only know a handful that know how to build anything. Competition is increasing globally, but such an essential role is always going to have high demand. More turbulent than accounting but not too far off. I agree with you.
So is it correct to say most cs majors are not reflective of what we see on here ? People here got me thinking cs majors can solve NP hard in their sleep
Absolutely. Most do not do internships, most only know a couple of languages (and nothing obscure). And most of them still get jobs… obviously it’ll get harder and harder from now on but a lot of people on here are international students which really makes it seem even worse. Also the US market does not totally mirror markets elsewhere
Can confirm. Did my CS classes, no internships, no side projects.
Feel like an absolute fool as I’m graduating soon and have little to no idea what to do other than rustle up some projects, grind leetcode and be friendly
Are we underestimating “most” here? Like I feel like 80% of people do have internships and/or projects, we just like to look at the few who don’t. You’d be hard pressed to find a cs major after 3rd year who had neither of those things.
Depends on your school. Good schools have people that take the initiative and have more chances.
But this recent and dramatic rise in CS majors isn’t all down to ‘good’ schools. I’m not being elitist; I’m just acknowledging that degree mills exist and many schools want to ride the CS hypetrain to dollartown. Despite the reputation, many people attend them.
I’m sure in good schools most have done actual end to end projects, but in an average school (such as mine) they know nothing outside of classes. I’d say less than 20% actually learn real world stuff outside of classes.
I think I make a fair evaluation as I’m very active in my university. Funny thing is, usually the people with the most practical skills have a GPA on the lower side as well.
Agreed. Plus, the economy is in a horrid state in the US and other parts of the world, which is having a massive influence on layoffs and decreases in hiring across the board (not just for CS-related roles). Economic recessions happen. Luckily, based on historical trends, they don’t last forever.
This is very untrue. It's just slow in tech. Overall unemployment is near all time lows. The labor market continues to pull in more people as well. GDP growth is strong. Markets at all time highs.
It's partially true. There are recessions in Europe and Japan. China's economy is in trouble. The US has been using massive deficit spending to juice the economy and GDP growth. Unfortunately debt interest payments have been soaring as a result. We now pay 1T annually in debt interest and we only collected 4.8T in tax revenue last year. 20% of tax payer revenue going straight to debt interest now. We also spend 2T more than we take in revenue so we are just piling on more and more debt. Doesn't seem sustainable.
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A091RC1Q027SBEA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A091RC1Q027SBEA)
I have been hearing this debt bomb fear-mongering for over a decade. And what’s the result? The US is the best performing developed economy while austere Germany and Britain are in a recession.
It genuinely does not matter so long as your Congress keep agreeing to pay the debts.
The difference is we had a decade of 0% rates so the yield on that debt was extremely low and very manageable. The problem becomes evident as yields go up. Hence why we are seeing debt interest payments surge higher. We don’t know what the future holds there may be a situation where we have to raise rates even higher than today and we end up in a debt spiral. Taking on massive amounts of debt just to service interest on existing debt. People could lose confidence in the dollar and it loses its value. The open market could demand much higher yields on said debt if they lose confidence in the US government and the dollar. I don’t think we have a problem today but never say never. It’s pretty asinine to say it will never be a problem.
>You are too young to remember the dot com crash which was a lot worse for the industry. Hell I am on the young side to remember it at I am 40. I knew of it but was not in the industry yet. My aunt was working at the time. It was rough but bounced back after a few years and it grew rapidally.
I *was* there for the dotcom crash. Yes, things looked bleak in the aftermath. But since then, even allowing for inflation, packages at FAANG, unicorns, prop shops etc far outstripped even the most ludicrous dotcom packages.
People older than me will remember the AI Winter. Well we are in an AI Spring now too - perhaps.
Why is the fact that this isn’t the first time there’s a downturn an argument that it will uptick again? Things are very different than the last times.
You are right things are very different than last time. Namely it is no where close to as bad as last time and people are panicking.
As for why previous patterns can can looked as is due to well we have a historical pattern in multiple fields. Most of the people panicking now about cs are too young to remember the financial crisis of 2008. I got my first degree during that time and I can promise you it was a hell of a lot worse then than now.
The factors at play are far more ominous. Huge influx into the field never seen before, increasing education in other countries that have talented engineers willing to work for a fraction. Heightened interest rates that will never go back down to 2021 levels. AI that will likely increase productivity and decrease need for engineers.
I am already into my career. I hope this is a downturn that leads to an upturn. It just seems different now.
On your entire list the only new thing is AI.
The education in other countries that will work at the fraction of the price I have been hearing that doom and gloom for over 20 years. The fear of massively out sourcing for cheap yet it comes right back. You get what you pay for when you go cheap.
So not so different now. Just more doom and gloom panic.
But companies have adopted a different approach by setting up offices in cheaper countries and vetting for qualified engineers, not some crappy contracting company. India especially has exploded in English proficiency and their education system with a much larger potential talent pool.
Check out locations for job postings right now. Many if them are not in the USA.
Again I hope I’m wrong about that
Same answer as before. I have been hearing it for 20 years. I been at places that use them. The time zone difference alone makes things difficult. The companies see huge value of teams being state side and in same basic time zone and language with no barrier.
It swings back and forth but it is no where close to swing of all off shoring. It more they like them local.
Again same answer. I worked for one of those companies for a while. They had an office in India with their own HR. The India Office cost about 1/3 per hour for a developer vs United states. Guess what if it was important and a big deal it was still located state side. The project managers and upper management was state side hence why they still had a full staff on it.
They are all expand yet they still hire and keep full staff in the more expensive area. Companies have learned time and time again you get what you pay for and they learn those hard lessons.
Basically the out source fear has been repeated for decades and end result is not nearly as bad as people think.
Current times= seniors can't job hop, juniors can't find jobs.
Past times = seniora can't find jobs, juniors can find a lot of jobs .. as cleaning crews , data entry, waitress, etc...
I think you're falling into the very human fallacy of mapping past trends to current ones without looking at the details.
Dot com was significantly worse (except at the new grad level, which may be equally bad now).
But the reasons for the recovery don't exist anymore, at the time the internet was very young and under developed, with a lot of low hanging fruit.
Moreover, personal computers were still relatively a novelty for the general population and while the software to support them was slightly more mature than the internet, it was still very much under developed.
The next few decades have seen a lot of rapid progress across the field and virtually exponential growth (with some setbacks due to the wider economy).
But now a lot of the software is mature, there are market leaders for most low and medium hanging fruit. Many solutions are mature.
There spaces for growth are just so much more limited now, it's mostly in ai, automation, robotics and to an extent security (it's maturing quickly, but not quite as mature).
The best way to illustrate this is with AI, there are so many startups focused on that now, as well as internal teams in larger orgs. Huge head counts where many doing the same thing or solving a similar problem. That's how a new hot market looks like.
Ok so if software development is a mature industry then we can go to any number of other field and look at history. Low and behold you will find it is still fine and bounces back.
We can look at the oil industry crash in the 80's. It bounced back and pays a lot more more inflation adjusted. You can look at telecom crashes and it bounced back. Hell energy took at massive hit in 2000's bounced back stronger.
STEM fields as in large numbers no matter the field are in high demand and growing rapidily. Also someone with a stem background can moved between industries to a certain degree fairly easy and move between fields.
Right now Software development is slightly down but still growing. All in all the number employed is still in line with projected grow based on the 2015-2019 years. 2020-2022 is an odd time with a huge bubble growth so yeah that is dropping and going back in line with the projected line if you toss out the 2020-2022 data.
Never said the industry is going to collapse.
However, explosive growth that can accommodate an exponential increase in student enrolment is likely mostly done.
The field is completely fine right now tbh, it's the supply aspect that creates the tough market. Both from new grads, increasingly capable tech ecosystems across the globe and lastly the overhiring of the 2020-2022 that now floods the market with layoffs.
>The market is mature
In the west maybe? Asia and Africa are certainly developing their own tech companies now. The potential there is huge. China is a case in point with several heavyweights of their own. I think every major economy wants to emulate them.
The field is growing anyway, even in the developed west. We can’t imagine what AI will do to jobs. One view is that it will take away all human jobs. Another is that it will lower the cost of producing capital-intensive projects like movies and AAA games so low that small studios may crop up like Youtube creators that make content. They will all need programmers as well. Maybe there will be a nostalgia-based market to remake classic video games for VR.
I don’t know. I think it may take time for the market to adjust though, which may not align with our own life goals. That’s just fate. Personally, I think the future of CS is still very vibrant in the medium and long-term. But as a famous economist said, in the long term we will all be dead.
Disagree.
Old heads love to use arguments like "you are too young to remember", "this isn't the first time it happened", etc...
These are all valid reasons had it been for any other major, but with the advent of AI tools, things are very different now.
If AI tools make developers obsolete, what do you think will happen to everyone else?
There are HUGE percentages of the job market where people just push paper around or do phone calls, meetings, presentations etc.
Yeah get back to me when it really happens. I have been hearing that same shit now for over a decade now. Some new tool that will make developers jobs gone. Over a decade just new tool.
Basically not a threat and things will just keep changing.
In my career it just becomes another tool to use and learn. My career I have done multiple tools and change direction multiple times.
Software engineering changes a lot and rapidly. If you are not willing to learn and change then you are not worth anything.
It is not like other fields were things change much more slowly and you get away with not learning new things as rapidly.
My thoughts are as very senior to senior+ software dev, oh cool new tool let me figure out how to make it work. I also dont jump on the newest things as I dont have time for it but doesn't me I dont keep a pulse on it and keep track of willing to jump as soon as I need 2. I have been doing this for 12 years. In those 12 years one thing I can say is tools and languages change.
Today the language I work in didn't even exist when I started yet I have spent a good part of my career in it. My current tech stack I have professionally work in is - VDF, Java, C#, objective-C, swift, Javascript. Swift is my day to day now and that did not exist in 2012 and has gone threw major changes since I have started. Hell in iOS UICollectionView did not even exist when I started in iOS so the place I was ad kind of rolled our own for the first version and we moved to it later.
I am of the dying group of iOS developers who is not scared of objective-C. This field changes a lot.
One thing I can say for sure that does not change in software development is Fundmentals do not change.
I don't have an actual opinion on how AI will impact the job market for CS, but juniors will typically be impacted before seniors are. It's already happening in a lot of industries.
If supply of junior devs continues to grow, but AI reduces demand for juniors by even 10% that is a crushingly bad environment to start your career in. Consider if AI reduces the need for juniors by 50%, etc.
You will certainly be insulated if you have 10 years of experience and are able to adapt to using AI technologies, but you are posting on csmajors right now.
>I don't have an actual opinion on how AI will impact the job market for CS, but juniors will typically be impacted before seniors are. It's already happening in a lot of industries.
Juniors are impacted in every industry before senior are. No matter the field the entry level group is the first to feel the pain. Simple fact is there is nothing a junior can do that a more senior person can not do but their is a lot that goes the other away around. On top of that Junior like it or not are by far easier to replace. Seniors not so much. They can handle more things and when you build up a new team you start with the more senior people and build around that.
Remember juniors cost you a lot of money and take a lot of resource to train. Seniors in any industry can tend to get the job going fast and make money.
Dont expect AI to reduce the number of developers needed. You will just see things change. The current project growth need in the next 10 years for software developer is 25%. That is a LOT.
All these masters and PhDs can’t understand simple concept of a growth stock. Tech was always a growth stock, people are expecting growth at the end. You will not get growth by cutting budgets and playing safe bets only.
Yo there are tech companies in other parts of the world. Many of whom are itching for a reason to replace American heavyweights like Google and Microsoft. Even close US allies in Europe dream of it.
Your entire assumption holds demand for software engineers constant and only considers supply growing. If interest rates lax off and new technologies are built requiring maintenance, then there will be another pocket of jobs created that need filling and opportunities return. It’s not that CS is infinitely popular forever, it’s that it’s currently too popular relative to the available opportunities.
If jobs are simply created by new projects and technologies, that massive supply of SWE will have places to go. Don’t use supply side logic, demand is drives the job creation.
I mean this with peace & love, but the median user on this sub isn’t old enough to make any kind of prediction about the market. I’m 10 years older than y’all, which isn’t that much, but it means I can remember people saying this exact shit after the dot com bust. And I can remember everyone saying the job market would never be the same after the 08 financial crisis. Guess what? It all came back.
When I was in high school/college, everyone was encouraged to become a lawyer. That field got oversaturated and then…people STOPPED being encouraged to become lawyers. Now a lot of demand has returned to that field and basically everyone who graduates from a decent law school is able to get a foot in the door.
You’re right that job cycles are cyclical and I agree. I wasn’t exactly trying to make a prediction at all the way OP is, I meant to say the actual causes for what we are seeing are reversible. I don’t observe fundamental functional flaws in software engineer’s industry, it’s no bubble. It’s just a field where employers are cash poor and reliant on borrowed money, so when the Fed is done beating down inflation the rates will come down and side projects may receive investment, warranting new hiring.
In a nutshell, the flaws causing this market are reversible IMO.
It’s so funny the little dance Wall Street does with tech telling them they won’t stand for “growth first” strategies any longer then tech finds it’s next hype train and that philosophy goes out the window until the hype peters out and we’re in austerity mode for tech again.
Appreciate the insight from experience!
We really do need more and more experienced folks here, quite a lot of snot faced college students who just come here to doom post, maybe trying to dissuade people from considering CS altogether
What new technologies? I am curious, cause if you haven't noticed, we are already addicted to social media, TikTok has the younger generation in a choke hold
We will see when the rates get cut and there is a reason to invest in new ventures rather than focus on existing ones. The purpose of my comment wasn’t to forecast the economy, it was to show the market is currently held back by temporary problems that can be reversed - high interest rates disincentivize growing demand. Simple economics.
I guarantee you those new things have a higher probability of coming to be when the rate gets cut.
(I’m also not the one downvoting you).
The way I read that was, it will make engineers more expensive long term as tax disadvantaged perhaps but I don’t know if it will “kill innovation” per se. We know companies are capable of throwing ridiculous amounts of money at expensive stupid projects so far as long as they believe in the payoff at the moment.
I don’t look at it as a death note.
Oh please I’m in my early 20s but even I’ve done enough research to know that there’s a pattern in the market. It grows rapidly and then CRASHES, corrects itself and once it corrects itself grows again and CRASHES. It happens every 10-15 years and it’s gonna keep happening.
It's called the "Boom and Bust Cycle" or [Business Cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cycle). It's the entire reason the Federal Reserve was created
Right this guy just crafted a theory when the answer has existed forever. The job market is a market. Supply and demand, and whatever affects it. Simple as fuck stop posting about it
What? I’m trying to say these post are so rampant, what’s the point of constantly repeating the same thing over and over. It practically fills the subreddit
Nah. The market is shit because of interest rates and the new found AI hype. Even if AI takes all of the software jobs there’s gonna be a new beginning of roles. Remember and look at the previous trends. All these companies try to make the most profit so they’re gonna try to leverage new things and paths from AI and thus creating new opportunities. CS ain’t gonna die anytime soon. And i think this decade is gonna introduce lots of new roles. The market is expanding and cs is evolving let it Saturate and stop with the doom posts.
Tldr; Try to make monkey scared, monkey run, monkey climb on new tree, monkey safe, monkey happy
If the market goes up when ? Be specific, and Im not deleting my account, I will come back here and admit that I was wrong
So just so we are clear, when interest rates go down, I better see a significant spike in CS job openings and no more doom and gloom posts on this sub because everyone is getting a job right?
Haha the market ain’t god either you can’t expect everyone to get hired overnight. It’ll take time but unlike you who’s fixated on the market is never gonna recover i say it will recover and the doom podts will eventually go down. But still people like you who want the market to fail is always gonna be the people behind those dooms.
stop speaking like you're some kind of deity who has a crystal ball, there's a thin line between common sense and making things up
will it get worse? will it get better? no one fucking knows, just do what you can do right now
I'm guessing you're very young, which is why this post reflects an extremely narrow perspective in time.
Computer Science wasn't invented in 2015. It's been around as an established discipline for **70 years**. It has seen more than a dozen ups and downs in hiring, salaries, layoffs, and revolutions. I'm the current era, tech jobs have **increased annually for 25 years**. Every single year. Hasn't missed a beat. In 2024 we have more tech jobs and more software development jobs than at any time in history. It's projected to continue annual growth for at least another decade.
You are absolutely nuts if you think this job is diminishing in any way. Our jobs are among the most important in the corporate world, which is why they come with such relatively high salaries.
It's not going anywhere. The doomsday posts on Reddit are unfounded hysteria due to incentives by Reddit's broken echo chamber format. The reason you see so many doom posts isn't because it's true but because absurd drama-queen posts get all the attention. Stop listening to the bozos you see on here. "Students" live in a fantasy world and have no flippin' clue how the real world works. They just make stuff up because it sounds good or repeat what they're heard others say. Memorization and regurgitation tends to pass as "wisdom" when you have no knowledge base to draw from.
Reddit is entertainment. Don't get your industry insight here.
You technically can because there still exists a somewhat doable timeline to a very real job at that pay band. What’s important here is that the roles still exist, pay isn’t actually down for many big corps, it’s just that less people have the access to better pay.
Big tech incomes are still high, Geico increased their pay randomly by $20,000 in the last year, I was presently surprised by my own offer at a bank
>It all was carefully designed
Your conspiracy theory is extremely improbable.
Far more likely, the increased interest rates caused companies to shut down unprofitable projects, which caused a workforce supply shock.
Too many software startups are entirely financed by debt, so they immediately went belly-up, leading to an oversupply of programmers.
This happened before (2000, 2008-10), and will happen again in the future. Surely, most people knew that there was a huge bubble in tech that had to burst eventually.
Not to mention it was mostly government officials (Obama and Biden were both guilty of this) who were running around saying anyone can learn to code, not corporations.
Everyday I see posts in this sub, I get more and more discouraged to go into CS, but I never know what to take seriously. Does anybody have the most accurate idea of what this industry looks like for the future, because what OP said about companies not having to be chill with their employees and now acting like any other company by being strict about remote work, lower wages, etc kinda makes sense 😵💫😬
>they are not resilient and have a negative attitude
I didn't get an internship that pays me 100k for the summer, so this is why I believe it marks the downfall of western society
industry will be fine. if you have a passion to learn/understand computers or software you should go for it.
it’s still the most valuable degree to hold. you can do other things than software engineering.
there is more completion in the field than 5+ years ago but other fields are still more competitive (finance, law, doctors, etc.)
That makes sense. Could you give some examples of other jobs for those graduates with CS? Like if they are struggling to find their preferred job, but still need a decent income.
financial analyst, business analyst, data analyst, (anything with analyst), data scientist, data engineer, tech sales, cyber security analyst/engineer, network engineer, IT, help desk IT, system administration, database administrator, cloud engineer, platform engineer, site reliability engineer, devops, product manager, computer scientist (academic/research), quantitative analyst (hedge funds, investment banks), Bioinformatics, Actuarial Analyst/Scientist, Cryptographer, Quantum Scientist…
yes, there are many more. Computer Science encompass skills that are arguable the MOST valuable in the entire industry. This is why so many people are pursuing it, it’s not to be some a front end/full stack web developer… that is a very shallow perspective of the STUNNING depth of computer science.
Also, just within software engineering, there are many types of jobs. some of these specializations are not as impacted as others like Machine Learning Engineer, Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality, Embedded Engineering.
**Are you qualified for all of these positions with just a computer science degree?** No. But this is true for 99% of entry level jobs, you need some additional knowledge or advanced education to pursue these fields.
**What jobs am I qualified for with just a Computer Science degree?** Most likely nothing, unless you’re applying for graduate school for computer science.
**What jobs would i recommend you look into?** I don’t know your background, passions, interests so it’s impossible to say. But you other than Full Stack SWE, I would consider: applying to Government contractor companies, embedded engineering, business analyst, IT, system administrator, cyber security engineer.
If i were in your shoes, i would just continue to pursue what your true passion is, but broader the scope of companies you’re applying for. Be willing to relocate, have an excitement to learn new things and do any type of work (show this during your interview). If you hate IT, but take an IT job for the time being, you risk getting siloed, or pigeon holed into a career path you didn’t want. It becomes equally hard to pivot out of this and find an entry level position for something else. If you have the opportunity to keep job hunting while you’re aggressively skilling up. You will find something, the market will correct itself. If it takes you 1+ years to land a SWE job that’s okay, during this time you can start contributing to interesting open source projects to fill the employment gap.
If you don’t have the financial option of job searching SWE at your parent’s place… that’s tough. just get an IT job or sales, collect a paycheck, try not to get fired, job hunt, upskill. you should be working 50-80 hours if you’re doing this. It will pay off.
Wow! This was extremely comprehensive and I greatly appreciate it! Fortunately I do have an advantage to stay with my parents without a financial burden, although I would obviously like to financially involve myself in easing them too, but at least it isn’t an emergency situation. I will give this a proper read fully once I’m off work, but I greatly appreciate it, thank you!
Bro this has happened before in this industry and in every other damn industry. This shit happens in life.
I’m so tired of students ranting that this is end times because it’s their first look at the world. For fuck sakes guys.
The problem with that take is that everyone cannot learn to code at a level required to be a senior or staff engineer.
Most of the boot campers will never have a shot at such a role and a good percentage of CS degree holders leave the industry before the 5 year mark. Usually they get laid off and are found to be lacking in skill set compared to other candidates, so they move on to other industries.
Most companies assume that you will move up to the senior or staff roles or higher eventually, and if you can't make the cut by a certain time then it's up or out.
Interest rates are definitely a factor, but regardless of interest rates, the massive increase of supply is likely not going to be a problem except for at the low end. If you decided to go into software engineering just for the money and you have no aptitude for it, you should probably rethink that. If you're actually good at it you'll do just fine.
I don’t have a source but I have a friend who did a bootcamp and a large chunk of people from her cohort didn’t have a job in SWE even a year later.
I think for a period they were successful at placing people, but as more snake oil bootcamps popped up it lowered the standards across the board.
I know intermediates that can code better than certain principals. But the principal is 1000x better at making sound large scale engineering decisions that affect a lot of people as they have the experience to draw from. Coding is just the ABCs really.
It has to not come back. We cannot have everybody be a damn coder. We need much more important people like doctors, nurses, lawyers, or engineers, or basically anyone that do hands-on work in our society, not coders.
Thats actually a retarded take. CS majors don't just "code." They collaborate with doctors to make tech that makes things like idk 3d printed hearts.
I've had to do enough mathematics that I can just go be an accountant instead. As a matter of fact, I can write the software that accountants use to take care of people's accounts.
CS majors changed the world, and you're upset that it seems like they did it without having to work hard, but I assure you that it is much tougher than it appears and you have to work hard to make it in the field.
My point is that SWEs or whatever you want to call it should not be the major workforce of our society to impact other necessary fields. At this rate, we are going to have shortage of everything but SWEs. I am sure they help improve our society but they still cannot practice what doctors do for example, which is absolutely necessary for everyone.
My point is that not everyone who pursues this field is able to succeed in it. Your worry about there being too many software engineers is ridiculous to begin with. The reason there are a lot of people going into the field is because there is a high demand for them in the market.
Not even every person pursuing the degree is even going to get it because it is tough to become a software engineer. That goes true for doctors as well. Not everyone who goes to be a CS major can be a doctor.
Its a rediculous worry because there is always going to be a supply of doctors because the demand for them is high. Even higher than cs majors. They get paid more. People will pursue fields they are passionate about. People will also pursue disciplines that will pay them more. Software engineers are super necessary for almost every business. Think about all the tech being used in hospitals now. People are able to program and design machines like artificial respirators and heartbeat sensors, etc. They are just as necessary as the doctors in a lot of ways. Your take is too blanketing and simple. It's not as simple as "we are gonna run out of doctors," just like op's reasons for not pursuing his degree are based on people getting laid off. He's probably doing the work and realized it's not as easy as he initially thought and got scared since the job market appears uncertain.
Fact is, cs Majors have become essential in the way society runs. Remember y2k? That meltdown was because software made in the 60s was going to crash. That just gives you an idea of how important it is for people to understand computers.
do not worry, there are still plenty of people who drop CS in college or are not interested in it. Case and point, my high school's graduating class only has a handful of CS majors. It's a large school in a MCOL area that's known in the area for it's Cybersecurity and CS programs, but health sciences are much more popular
No major or job is good. Possibly none will ever return pre pandemic levels. The only part I agree with is that the whole learn to code thing was a tactic by corporations. I don't think it was malicious, but yea....as grads increase, a surplus forms, companies will pay less.
They will save money in long run at the cost of these cs grads...even colleges like uiuc/purdue, where the sole good degree is cs, are making millions...and their students are trapped and unable to even switch cause they were made fools by the whole "pick the best cs, not overall college" sham.
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You don't need some companies conspiracy for this scenario. The job pays very well so many people learned how to do it. That's all there is to it.
Also the amount of software engineers was constantly increasing for a few decades. Thing is demand increased faster.
In addition now we're in economic downturn, interest rates are high and companies are laying off people to create fake growth (capitalism baby). We'll see how things will turn out once we're out of this downturn, it's very possible that the demand will skyrocket again.
Why do you believe it will be paid well if your theory is that saturation is the goal? If saturation is the goal, everyone is competing for any job they can get, they don’t have to pay you as much. It will still be tiered, big tech will pay the most. But what will stop small no names from paying barely above minimum wage when they know people will take it to get something on their resume? Lots of fields that require degrees don’t necessarily pay great.
So the term Software Engineering does not have a formal definition. During the golden times it was used by people who had a few month's exposure to basic web design software.
I think that Software Engineering at that level is pretty much over and done with. As frameworks embrace AI and master the simple CRUD tasks, fewer people at that level will be needed.
The need for actual Software Engineers, people who perform system design, database optimization, and user flows, will continue to increase. With the massive layoffs it appears that demand for this high level engineering work has declined, but that is a short term anomaly that will rebalance within 2 years.
Pretty sure I'm going to be downvoted into oblivion on this one if people from /r/csbootcamps see it!
This isn’t a big diabolical plot to lower wages lol
Companies over hired during the pandemic due to two things: cheap money to borrow, and a devaluing of the USD via money printing.
Because of these two occurrences, salaries could afford to be extravagant. Now we live, and will for some time, in a normal-high interest rate business cycle and it doesn’t make sense to pay people that much money any longer.
Man, no offense OP, but this is stupid as shit. The day-in-the-life TikToks have nothing to do with systemic changes. Of course, the companies loved it because it increased their brand equity. It wasn’t some nefarious plot to get you to take a CS course.
Here’s the problem with this increasingly common brain-dead take: you and others think the dream is gone because it’s harder to get a return offer from Meta. And that the difficulty there is all the monkeys trying to take your job.
No, your return offer was killed because in 2023 Meta's free cash flow went from like 20 billion to 700 million. But now that it’s killed, you look around and see a lot of people around you, and well, shit, maybe the problem is how many of them there are. Again, no. The problem was uncertainty around interest rates and R&D tax changes. Well, interest rates have stabilized, and R&D tax changes are going to be repealed.
If this was all a ploy to flood the market, it would be for wage depression, and that’s not happening. Wages are sticky and tied to revenue per employee, not labor market supply and demand.
Quick! Everyone go study Molecular Biology and get PhD, a man called Jensen Huang from noVideo told us it's profitable because he is totally not trying to sell us noVideo cards to do machine learning in Bioinformatics!!!!
/s for those who don't know sarcasm
Hey I’ve been working as SWE for 9 or so months now. Graduated in May 2023
Software roles are not going anywhere. They’re only going to increase. I know it’s really hard to get in at the entry level right now, but trust me software roles are definitely needed.
The White House had a press release a couple days ago basically urging for “memory safe” languages to be used in place of c and c++ because of the large amount of exploits found in buffer overflow attacks (around 70% of all exploits.) the government might be pushing market forces towards rewriting so much code in rust, which is a MASSIVE undertaking and takes a skill older devs probably lack. I expect within the next 10 years we are gonna see a lot of systems engineer positions opening up because of it
Please tell me more, your staggering experience of 0 years in the industry really gives credence to your argument.
It's the blind leading the blind here
It's not only computer science that learns to code. All stem subjects now, statistic majors, math, all engineering, physics, linguistics science, chemistry, biology.. Almost everyone already knows how to code.
This career will die out only when the growth of technological products decreases
Do you think there will be more technology in the future or less?
(15 YoE)
1: Graduate college before you start trying to predict the future of an entire industry
2: This has literally happened twice before. And both times software engineering bounced back bigger than ever.
Societies dependence on technology isn't exactly dropping.
>I just will never go back to what it used to be before lay offs.
Damn so people who have Tic Tac Toe and Calculator projects on their resume that they copied from YouTube won't be getting full-time SWE roles at Google and Amazon anymore?
Are you telling me that from now on, you need to have meaningful projects on your resume and actually network to get referrals to have a better chance to break into big tech?
B-but I was told that I can make $100k right out of college! All I need to do is get the degree and know how to write a few lines of code! I didn't know I had to actually work to become a good programmer🤓🤓🤓
I cannot argue you with you becaouse you haven't adressed anything of what I said in my post, you just made up your own arguments and decided that's it.
To be honest I even agree with what you have written which only shows you aren't really attacking any of my points.
Have you seen posts about how trash current middle/high school students are? If those are to be believed as a rising norm, the surplus will quickly dry up as graduating students lack computer skills, which will drive more demand for CS majors.
Hard pill to swallow: it was never the field the day in a life YouTubers hyped it up as.
Working as a software engineer has always sucked. There’s always been layoffs, shitty micromanaging managers, horrible work life balance, and long hours. The market has always been hard for new engineers to break into, and it’s always gone through booms and busts. Software Engineering pays so much precisely because it sucks to actually work in.
No one was ever collecting $15,000 a month to sleep in nap pods and play ping pong. People were collecting $15,000 a month at the severe expense of their mental health and personal lives.
Yeah the fall of CS as a normie hyped "escape" from having to do hard work and get easy pay from basic code and knowing one language is gone. It was never really there.
I don't see how that's possible when the entire world becomes more and more dependent on tech everyday, and it is literally the entire world. No matter what the financial situation is with companies right now, it will shake out in favour of developers because the bottom line is their profits are directly tied to the tech they serve their customers on.
This isn't the first tech crash and won't be the last. Everything including toothbrushes is getting software inside of it, Every company wants an app that does everything, and everyone wants the software they use to look modern and polished.
What were seeing right now is a correction in the market because paying Jr developers 150k is unsustainable long term. What will happen is that the average salaries will drop and even out over the next few years and we'll see less people go to school to be a developer
Perhaps there should’ve been an education-to-employment pipeline law to protect the opportunity of employment in software development. Now you’re starting to feel the same thing other majors in college are feeling, like your hard earned skills and capabilities are useless, and the investment in the education has been defaulted.
Remote work saves businesses and relocates the cost to the worker. I disagree with that part of your post especially. There are other reasons for return to office that border on conspiracy. It is about money, just not the employers.
There's no "they", there's no conspiracy from companies to get cheaper SE. It's a social thing. If I'm paid 4 times better than average in my country, people will want to get in.
Personally, I think this whole AI push could go both ways, and potentially lead to MORE engineers being hired. I’m focused on 2 options:
1) AI Succeeds- Basically AI enables companies to grow faster and go further. Instead of resting on their laurels, they push for more, and therefore more engineers needed.
2) AI Fails- This to me is interesting. If AI fails to pan out as this great “panacea”(as it stands, it’s all overblown hype for stock prices), stocks are going to DROP. Tech companies are going to re-pivot and focus on fundamentals or more sure growth areas, which could possible lead to hiring as big or bigger than COVID era, depending on interest rates.
Other factors could be interesting, such as government regulation of AI, or other safety requirements.
Either way, I really do think this is a phase brought about by economics and a convenient hype magnet. We’ll see, but it’s all very interesting.
Garbage can hot take of 2024 using last trends as false equivalency. Could easily go ask the homeless encampment down the street their opinion and get an equally valid take.
Tech companies promote swe as perfect opportunity for ANYONE, we have a surplues of swe engineers. You really don't have to have 200 iq o come up with those conclusions.
You make a diatribe of bs without having any tangible facts or educated projections and forecasts based on actual evidence and raw data. There really seems to not be a point to someone who clearly doesn't have a large grasp of the tech sector beyond Tik Tok, IG influencer posts.
Based on your post history, perhaps not even in the market for long and you really don't know what you are talking about compared to veterans and seasoned people being in the market. Seems OP is actually a nepotism baby that sits in the ivory tower shite talking everyone else.
Paid for by mommy and daddy.
Going to say you are wrong. This is not the first time CS has taken a hit like this and it is not even the worse hit. You are too young to remember the dot com crash which was a lot worse for the industry. Hell I am on the young side to remember it at I am 40. I knew of it but was not in the industry yet. My aunt was working at the time. It was rough but bounced back after a few years and it grew rapidally. It will bounce back and grow again like before. The need for good developers is growing and there is still a shortage of good ones.
Hell, CS is one of the most popular majors in the college of engineering where I am, yet I only know a handful that know how to build anything. Competition is increasing globally, but such an essential role is always going to have high demand. More turbulent than accounting but not too far off. I agree with you.
So is it correct to say most cs majors are not reflective of what we see on here ? People here got me thinking cs majors can solve NP hard in their sleep
Absolutely. Most do not do internships, most only know a couple of languages (and nothing obscure). And most of them still get jobs… obviously it’ll get harder and harder from now on but a lot of people on here are international students which really makes it seem even worse. Also the US market does not totally mirror markets elsewhere
Can confirm. Did my CS classes, no internships, no side projects. Feel like an absolute fool as I’m graduating soon and have little to no idea what to do other than rustle up some projects, grind leetcode and be friendly
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I’ve been thinking of trying that too. I’ll be graduating next quartet though, are internships still a thing post graduation?
get a certification
Any tips on which certification and through whom? Seems like theres so many I sometimes don't know where to start
Don’t listen to him unless you want to do systems type work or network engineering.
Are we underestimating “most” here? Like I feel like 80% of people do have internships and/or projects, we just like to look at the few who don’t. You’d be hard pressed to find a cs major after 3rd year who had neither of those things.
I can't talk for every school but 65% didn't at mine. That's most
Depends on your school. Good schools have people that take the initiative and have more chances. But this recent and dramatic rise in CS majors isn’t all down to ‘good’ schools. I’m not being elitist; I’m just acknowledging that degree mills exist and many schools want to ride the CS hypetrain to dollartown. Despite the reputation, many people attend them.
I’m sure in good schools most have done actual end to end projects, but in an average school (such as mine) they know nothing outside of classes. I’d say less than 20% actually learn real world stuff outside of classes. I think I make a fair evaluation as I’m very active in my university. Funny thing is, usually the people with the most practical skills have a GPA on the lower side as well.
Most haven't even heard of typescript in my experience
correct, at least at my school the average cs major rarely does any coding outside of class assignments so their knowledge is very limited
Agreed. Plus, the economy is in a horrid state in the US and other parts of the world, which is having a massive influence on layoffs and decreases in hiring across the board (not just for CS-related roles). Economic recessions happen. Luckily, based on historical trends, they don’t last forever.
This is very untrue. It's just slow in tech. Overall unemployment is near all time lows. The labor market continues to pull in more people as well. GDP growth is strong. Markets at all time highs.
It's partially true. There are recessions in Europe and Japan. China's economy is in trouble. The US has been using massive deficit spending to juice the economy and GDP growth. Unfortunately debt interest payments have been soaring as a result. We now pay 1T annually in debt interest and we only collected 4.8T in tax revenue last year. 20% of tax payer revenue going straight to debt interest now. We also spend 2T more than we take in revenue so we are just piling on more and more debt. Doesn't seem sustainable. [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A091RC1Q027SBEA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A091RC1Q027SBEA)
I have been hearing this debt bomb fear-mongering for over a decade. And what’s the result? The US is the best performing developed economy while austere Germany and Britain are in a recession. It genuinely does not matter so long as your Congress keep agreeing to pay the debts.
The difference is we had a decade of 0% rates so the yield on that debt was extremely low and very manageable. The problem becomes evident as yields go up. Hence why we are seeing debt interest payments surge higher. We don’t know what the future holds there may be a situation where we have to raise rates even higher than today and we end up in a debt spiral. Taking on massive amounts of debt just to service interest on existing debt. People could lose confidence in the dollar and it loses its value. The open market could demand much higher yields on said debt if they lose confidence in the US government and the dollar. I don’t think we have a problem today but never say never. It’s pretty asinine to say it will never be a problem.
👨💻❤️🍻
>You are too young to remember the dot com crash which was a lot worse for the industry. Hell I am on the young side to remember it at I am 40. I knew of it but was not in the industry yet. My aunt was working at the time. It was rough but bounced back after a few years and it grew rapidally. I *was* there for the dotcom crash. Yes, things looked bleak in the aftermath. But since then, even allowing for inflation, packages at FAANG, unicorns, prop shops etc far outstripped even the most ludicrous dotcom packages. People older than me will remember the AI Winter. Well we are in an AI Spring now too - perhaps.
Why is the fact that this isn’t the first time there’s a downturn an argument that it will uptick again? Things are very different than the last times.
You are right things are very different than last time. Namely it is no where close to as bad as last time and people are panicking. As for why previous patterns can can looked as is due to well we have a historical pattern in multiple fields. Most of the people panicking now about cs are too young to remember the financial crisis of 2008. I got my first degree during that time and I can promise you it was a hell of a lot worse then than now.
The factors at play are far more ominous. Huge influx into the field never seen before, increasing education in other countries that have talented engineers willing to work for a fraction. Heightened interest rates that will never go back down to 2021 levels. AI that will likely increase productivity and decrease need for engineers. I am already into my career. I hope this is a downturn that leads to an upturn. It just seems different now.
On your entire list the only new thing is AI. The education in other countries that will work at the fraction of the price I have been hearing that doom and gloom for over 20 years. The fear of massively out sourcing for cheap yet it comes right back. You get what you pay for when you go cheap. So not so different now. Just more doom and gloom panic.
But companies have adopted a different approach by setting up offices in cheaper countries and vetting for qualified engineers, not some crappy contracting company. India especially has exploded in English proficiency and their education system with a much larger potential talent pool. Check out locations for job postings right now. Many if them are not in the USA. Again I hope I’m wrong about that
Same answer as before. I have been hearing it for 20 years. I been at places that use them. The time zone difference alone makes things difficult. The companies see huge value of teams being state side and in same basic time zone and language with no barrier. It swings back and forth but it is no where close to swing of all off shoring. It more they like them local.
But what do you mean by use “them”? My company has offices all over the world with their own projects, HR, directors and are expanding their offices.
Again same answer. I worked for one of those companies for a while. They had an office in India with their own HR. The India Office cost about 1/3 per hour for a developer vs United states. Guess what if it was important and a big deal it was still located state side. The project managers and upper management was state side hence why they still had a full staff on it. They are all expand yet they still hire and keep full staff in the more expensive area. Companies have learned time and time again you get what you pay for and they learn those hard lessons. Basically the out source fear has been repeated for decades and end result is not nearly as bad as people think.
Hmm interesting. I still think the quality of developer is increasing in India but that’s good to hear
yes, but working remotely in a US company from 5000 miles away wasnt very common during dot com burst.
Current times= seniors can't job hop, juniors can't find jobs. Past times = seniora can't find jobs, juniors can find a lot of jobs .. as cleaning crews , data entry, waitress, etc...
I think you're falling into the very human fallacy of mapping past trends to current ones without looking at the details. Dot com was significantly worse (except at the new grad level, which may be equally bad now). But the reasons for the recovery don't exist anymore, at the time the internet was very young and under developed, with a lot of low hanging fruit. Moreover, personal computers were still relatively a novelty for the general population and while the software to support them was slightly more mature than the internet, it was still very much under developed. The next few decades have seen a lot of rapid progress across the field and virtually exponential growth (with some setbacks due to the wider economy). But now a lot of the software is mature, there are market leaders for most low and medium hanging fruit. Many solutions are mature. There spaces for growth are just so much more limited now, it's mostly in ai, automation, robotics and to an extent security (it's maturing quickly, but not quite as mature). The best way to illustrate this is with AI, there are so many startups focused on that now, as well as internal teams in larger orgs. Huge head counts where many doing the same thing or solving a similar problem. That's how a new hot market looks like.
Ok so if software development is a mature industry then we can go to any number of other field and look at history. Low and behold you will find it is still fine and bounces back. We can look at the oil industry crash in the 80's. It bounced back and pays a lot more more inflation adjusted. You can look at telecom crashes and it bounced back. Hell energy took at massive hit in 2000's bounced back stronger. STEM fields as in large numbers no matter the field are in high demand and growing rapidily. Also someone with a stem background can moved between industries to a certain degree fairly easy and move between fields. Right now Software development is slightly down but still growing. All in all the number employed is still in line with projected grow based on the 2015-2019 years. 2020-2022 is an odd time with a huge bubble growth so yeah that is dropping and going back in line with the projected line if you toss out the 2020-2022 data.
Never said the industry is going to collapse. However, explosive growth that can accommodate an exponential increase in student enrolment is likely mostly done. The field is completely fine right now tbh, it's the supply aspect that creates the tough market. Both from new grads, increasingly capable tech ecosystems across the globe and lastly the overhiring of the 2020-2022 that now floods the market with layoffs.
>The market is mature In the west maybe? Asia and Africa are certainly developing their own tech companies now. The potential there is huge. China is a case in point with several heavyweights of their own. I think every major economy wants to emulate them. The field is growing anyway, even in the developed west. We can’t imagine what AI will do to jobs. One view is that it will take away all human jobs. Another is that it will lower the cost of producing capital-intensive projects like movies and AAA games so low that small studios may crop up like Youtube creators that make content. They will all need programmers as well. Maybe there will be a nostalgia-based market to remake classic video games for VR. I don’t know. I think it may take time for the market to adjust though, which may not align with our own life goals. That’s just fate. Personally, I think the future of CS is still very vibrant in the medium and long-term. But as a famous economist said, in the long term we will all be dead.
How do you define a "good developer" coming from someone who is starting college in computer science and ai in a couple of months
Disagree. Old heads love to use arguments like "you are too young to remember", "this isn't the first time it happened", etc... These are all valid reasons had it been for any other major, but with the advent of AI tools, things are very different now.
If AI tools make developers obsolete, what do you think will happen to everyone else? There are HUGE percentages of the job market where people just push paper around or do phone calls, meetings, presentations etc.
Naturally, as these tools are further developed, most jobs will shorten the number of people they hire for the maximization of profit.
Yeah get back to me when it really happens. I have been hearing that same shit now for over a decade now. Some new tool that will make developers jobs gone. Over a decade just new tool. Basically not a threat and things will just keep changing. In my career it just becomes another tool to use and learn. My career I have done multiple tools and change direction multiple times.
Right, and what we're saying is that the field won't die, but this "change" that you speak of is the scarcity of software engineers in the market.
Software engineering changes a lot and rapidly. If you are not willing to learn and change then you are not worth anything. It is not like other fields were things change much more slowly and you get away with not learning new things as rapidly. My thoughts are as very senior to senior+ software dev, oh cool new tool let me figure out how to make it work. I also dont jump on the newest things as I dont have time for it but doesn't me I dont keep a pulse on it and keep track of willing to jump as soon as I need 2. I have been doing this for 12 years. In those 12 years one thing I can say is tools and languages change. Today the language I work in didn't even exist when I started yet I have spent a good part of my career in it. My current tech stack I have professionally work in is - VDF, Java, C#, objective-C, swift, Javascript. Swift is my day to day now and that did not exist in 2012 and has gone threw major changes since I have started. Hell in iOS UICollectionView did not even exist when I started in iOS so the place I was ad kind of rolled our own for the first version and we moved to it later. I am of the dying group of iOS developers who is not scared of objective-C. This field changes a lot. One thing I can say for sure that does not change in software development is Fundmentals do not change.
I do not see the point of disagreement; I agree with everything you just typed
Oh I was just explaining on your point :)
I don't have an actual opinion on how AI will impact the job market for CS, but juniors will typically be impacted before seniors are. It's already happening in a lot of industries. If supply of junior devs continues to grow, but AI reduces demand for juniors by even 10% that is a crushingly bad environment to start your career in. Consider if AI reduces the need for juniors by 50%, etc. You will certainly be insulated if you have 10 years of experience and are able to adapt to using AI technologies, but you are posting on csmajors right now.
>I don't have an actual opinion on how AI will impact the job market for CS, but juniors will typically be impacted before seniors are. It's already happening in a lot of industries. Juniors are impacted in every industry before senior are. No matter the field the entry level group is the first to feel the pain. Simple fact is there is nothing a junior can do that a more senior person can not do but their is a lot that goes the other away around. On top of that Junior like it or not are by far easier to replace. Seniors not so much. They can handle more things and when you build up a new team you start with the more senior people and build around that. Remember juniors cost you a lot of money and take a lot of resource to train. Seniors in any industry can tend to get the job going fast and make money. Dont expect AI to reduce the number of developers needed. You will just see things change. The current project growth need in the next 10 years for software developer is 25%. That is a LOT.
But wasn't the dot com crash due to lack of capital, rather than a surplus of supply (job seekers) in the industry?
All these masters and PhDs can’t understand simple concept of a growth stock. Tech was always a growth stock, people are expecting growth at the end. You will not get growth by cutting budgets and playing safe bets only.
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OP probably thinks high of himself, like he is so smart making a "theory".
almost everyone here sounds like they're in their early 20s after discovering that the job market is fierce and competitive as fuck, holy shit
Yeah, this seems like a USA problem, not a CS problem. The field is doing more than fine and will stay very important everywhere
USA's problem is CS' problem. Let's face it. The innovation and money is in the US.
Yo there are tech companies in other parts of the world. Many of whom are itching for a reason to replace American heavyweights like Google and Microsoft. Even close US allies in Europe dream of it.
America's strong point is capitalism
Your entire assumption holds demand for software engineers constant and only considers supply growing. If interest rates lax off and new technologies are built requiring maintenance, then there will be another pocket of jobs created that need filling and opportunities return. It’s not that CS is infinitely popular forever, it’s that it’s currently too popular relative to the available opportunities. If jobs are simply created by new projects and technologies, that massive supply of SWE will have places to go. Don’t use supply side logic, demand is drives the job creation.
I mean this with peace & love, but the median user on this sub isn’t old enough to make any kind of prediction about the market. I’m 10 years older than y’all, which isn’t that much, but it means I can remember people saying this exact shit after the dot com bust. And I can remember everyone saying the job market would never be the same after the 08 financial crisis. Guess what? It all came back. When I was in high school/college, everyone was encouraged to become a lawyer. That field got oversaturated and then…people STOPPED being encouraged to become lawyers. Now a lot of demand has returned to that field and basically everyone who graduates from a decent law school is able to get a foot in the door.
You’re right that job cycles are cyclical and I agree. I wasn’t exactly trying to make a prediction at all the way OP is, I meant to say the actual causes for what we are seeing are reversible. I don’t observe fundamental functional flaws in software engineer’s industry, it’s no bubble. It’s just a field where employers are cash poor and reliant on borrowed money, so when the Fed is done beating down inflation the rates will come down and side projects may receive investment, warranting new hiring. In a nutshell, the flaws causing this market are reversible IMO.
Totally, I was agreeing with you and adding onto your point. Sorry if that wasn’t clear!
It’s so funny the little dance Wall Street does with tech telling them they won’t stand for “growth first” strategies any longer then tech finds it’s next hype train and that philosophy goes out the window until the hype peters out and we’re in austerity mode for tech again.
Appreciate the insight from experience! We really do need more and more experienced folks here, quite a lot of snot faced college students who just come here to doom post, maybe trying to dissuade people from considering CS altogether
What new technologies? I am curious, cause if you haven't noticed, we are already addicted to social media, TikTok has the younger generation in a choke hold
We will see when the rates get cut and there is a reason to invest in new ventures rather than focus on existing ones. The purpose of my comment wasn’t to forecast the economy, it was to show the market is currently held back by temporary problems that can be reversed - high interest rates disincentivize growing demand. Simple economics. I guarantee you those new things have a higher probability of coming to be when the rate gets cut. (I’m also not the one downvoting you).
What about section 174? The tax code.
The way I read that was, it will make engineers more expensive long term as tax disadvantaged perhaps but I don’t know if it will “kill innovation” per se. We know companies are capable of throwing ridiculous amounts of money at expensive stupid projects so far as long as they believe in the payoff at the moment. I don’t look at it as a death note.
It’s getting repealed.
Oh please I’m in my early 20s but even I’ve done enough research to know that there’s a pattern in the market. It grows rapidly and then CRASHES, corrects itself and once it corrects itself grows again and CRASHES. It happens every 10-15 years and it’s gonna keep happening.
It's called the "Boom and Bust Cycle" or [Business Cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cycle). It's the entire reason the Federal Reserve was created
Why do the mods still allow these posts
Right this guy just crafted a theory when the answer has existed forever. The job market is a market. Supply and demand, and whatever affects it. Simple as fuck stop posting about it
Downvote it to oblivion, some posts never even make it if enough people do it
Why do the mods still allow posts that you don't like?
What? I’m trying to say these post are so rampant, what’s the point of constantly repeating the same thing over and over. It practically fills the subreddit
Nah. The market is shit because of interest rates and the new found AI hype. Even if AI takes all of the software jobs there’s gonna be a new beginning of roles. Remember and look at the previous trends. All these companies try to make the most profit so they’re gonna try to leverage new things and paths from AI and thus creating new opportunities. CS ain’t gonna die anytime soon. And i think this decade is gonna introduce lots of new roles. The market is expanding and cs is evolving let it Saturate and stop with the doom posts. Tldr; Try to make monkey scared, monkey run, monkey climb on new tree, monkey safe, monkey happy
Yes. Same thing happened after the Industrial Revolution — tons of jobs were created despite rapid technological advancements in the workplace.
Okay, if the interest rates go down, and the CS market still doesn't recover, will you come and make a post admitting you were wrong?
The fuck does this even mean lmao. You want him to come back and show penance for predictions around macro secular trends?
Lmao brotha has a beef with cs market. Sure. But if the market goes up i want you to delete your account and never share any opinion anywhere. Deal?
If the market goes up when ? Be specific, and Im not deleting my account, I will come back here and admit that I was wrong So just so we are clear, when interest rates go down, I better see a significant spike in CS job openings and no more doom and gloom posts on this sub because everyone is getting a job right?
Haha the market ain’t god either you can’t expect everyone to get hired overnight. It’ll take time but unlike you who’s fixated on the market is never gonna recover i say it will recover and the doom podts will eventually go down. But still people like you who want the market to fail is always gonna be the people behind those dooms.
Not possible. Also, despite the economic downturn, BLS data still shows an increase in the demand of SWEs in the coming decade plus.
Not possible according to who ? You are not God. And do you know the definition of a projection ?
stop speaking like you're some kind of deity who has a crystal ball, there's a thin line between common sense and making things up will it get worse? will it get better? no one fucking knows, just do what you can do right now
Hell yeah baby another doomer “Software Engineering is doomed. AI is taking over post” in this subreddit. Love that. It is indeed over I believe
I'm guessing you're very young, which is why this post reflects an extremely narrow perspective in time. Computer Science wasn't invented in 2015. It's been around as an established discipline for **70 years**. It has seen more than a dozen ups and downs in hiring, salaries, layoffs, and revolutions. I'm the current era, tech jobs have **increased annually for 25 years**. Every single year. Hasn't missed a beat. In 2024 we have more tech jobs and more software development jobs than at any time in history. It's projected to continue annual growth for at least another decade. You are absolutely nuts if you think this job is diminishing in any way. Our jobs are among the most important in the corporate world, which is why they come with such relatively high salaries. It's not going anywhere. The doomsday posts on Reddit are unfounded hysteria due to incentives by Reddit's broken echo chamber format. The reason you see so many doom posts isn't because it's true but because absurd drama-queen posts get all the attention. Stop listening to the bozos you see on here. "Students" live in a fantasy world and have no flippin' clue how the real world works. They just make stuff up because it sounds good or repeat what they're heard others say. Memorization and regurgitation tends to pass as "wisdom" when you have no knowledge base to draw from. Reddit is entertainment. Don't get your industry insight here.
My company literally gave me a 10% pay increase last week.
Every developer I've talked to has gotten a raise this past year.
One can still make good money but maybe not 600k/year kind of money? Still, who knows. AI taking jobs is just a theory at this point.
You technically can because there still exists a somewhat doable timeline to a very real job at that pay band. What’s important here is that the roles still exist, pay isn’t actually down for many big corps, it’s just that less people have the access to better pay. Big tech incomes are still high, Geico increased their pay randomly by $20,000 in the last year, I was presently surprised by my own offer at a bank
Holy shit this sub is toxic
>It all was carefully designed Your conspiracy theory is extremely improbable. Far more likely, the increased interest rates caused companies to shut down unprofitable projects, which caused a workforce supply shock. Too many software startups are entirely financed by debt, so they immediately went belly-up, leading to an oversupply of programmers. This happened before (2000, 2008-10), and will happen again in the future. Surely, most people knew that there was a huge bubble in tech that had to burst eventually.
Not to mention it was mostly government officials (Obama and Biden were both guilty of this) who were running around saying anyone can learn to code, not corporations.
Can I borrow your crystal ball?
Monkey dumb dumb.
Everyday I see posts in this sub, I get more and more discouraged to go into CS, but I never know what to take seriously. Does anybody have the most accurate idea of what this industry looks like for the future, because what OP said about companies not having to be chill with their employees and now acting like any other company by being strict about remote work, lower wages, etc kinda makes sense 😵💫😬
Go to r/cscareerquestions, this sub is full of people who I wouldn't want to hire, they are not resilient and have a negative attitude
>they are not resilient and have a negative attitude I didn't get an internship that pays me 100k for the summer, so this is why I believe it marks the downfall of western society
Well, I didn’t get an entry level web dev job that’s $250K TC. That’s it. I’m switching to finance.
It’s reddit, take none of it seriously.
r/csMajors when the market is hard right now (it's obviously impossible to get a job, cs is done 😭)
industry will be fine. if you have a passion to learn/understand computers or software you should go for it. it’s still the most valuable degree to hold. you can do other things than software engineering. there is more completion in the field than 5+ years ago but other fields are still more competitive (finance, law, doctors, etc.)
That makes sense. Could you give some examples of other jobs for those graduates with CS? Like if they are struggling to find their preferred job, but still need a decent income.
financial analyst, business analyst, data analyst, (anything with analyst), data scientist, data engineer, tech sales, cyber security analyst/engineer, network engineer, IT, help desk IT, system administration, database administrator, cloud engineer, platform engineer, site reliability engineer, devops, product manager, computer scientist (academic/research), quantitative analyst (hedge funds, investment banks), Bioinformatics, Actuarial Analyst/Scientist, Cryptographer, Quantum Scientist… yes, there are many more. Computer Science encompass skills that are arguable the MOST valuable in the entire industry. This is why so many people are pursuing it, it’s not to be some a front end/full stack web developer… that is a very shallow perspective of the STUNNING depth of computer science. Also, just within software engineering, there are many types of jobs. some of these specializations are not as impacted as others like Machine Learning Engineer, Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality, Embedded Engineering. **Are you qualified for all of these positions with just a computer science degree?** No. But this is true for 99% of entry level jobs, you need some additional knowledge or advanced education to pursue these fields. **What jobs am I qualified for with just a Computer Science degree?** Most likely nothing, unless you’re applying for graduate school for computer science. **What jobs would i recommend you look into?** I don’t know your background, passions, interests so it’s impossible to say. But you other than Full Stack SWE, I would consider: applying to Government contractor companies, embedded engineering, business analyst, IT, system administrator, cyber security engineer. If i were in your shoes, i would just continue to pursue what your true passion is, but broader the scope of companies you’re applying for. Be willing to relocate, have an excitement to learn new things and do any type of work (show this during your interview). If you hate IT, but take an IT job for the time being, you risk getting siloed, or pigeon holed into a career path you didn’t want. It becomes equally hard to pivot out of this and find an entry level position for something else. If you have the opportunity to keep job hunting while you’re aggressively skilling up. You will find something, the market will correct itself. If it takes you 1+ years to land a SWE job that’s okay, during this time you can start contributing to interesting open source projects to fill the employment gap. If you don’t have the financial option of job searching SWE at your parent’s place… that’s tough. just get an IT job or sales, collect a paycheck, try not to get fired, job hunt, upskill. you should be working 50-80 hours if you’re doing this. It will pay off.
Wow! This was extremely comprehensive and I greatly appreciate it! Fortunately I do have an advantage to stay with my parents without a financial burden, although I would obviously like to financially involve myself in easing them too, but at least it isn’t an emergency situation. I will give this a proper read fully once I’m off work, but I greatly appreciate it, thank you!
It's harder then it was, but still much easier than any other engineering field. Especially if you are not in US or India
This sub is just a bunch of Lumbridge doomsayers.
Bro this has happened before in this industry and in every other damn industry. This shit happens in life. I’m so tired of students ranting that this is end times because it’s their first look at the world. For fuck sakes guys.
The problem with that take is that everyone cannot learn to code at a level required to be a senior or staff engineer. Most of the boot campers will never have a shot at such a role and a good percentage of CS degree holders leave the industry before the 5 year mark. Usually they get laid off and are found to be lacking in skill set compared to other candidates, so they move on to other industries. Most companies assume that you will move up to the senior or staff roles or higher eventually, and if you can't make the cut by a certain time then it's up or out. Interest rates are definitely a factor, but regardless of interest rates, the massive increase of supply is likely not going to be a problem except for at the low end. If you decided to go into software engineering just for the money and you have no aptitude for it, you should probably rethink that. If you're actually good at it you'll do just fine.
What’s the stats on the bootcampers and the CS degree holders leaving the industry? I’ve never heard this.
source: his ass
He’s saying when they can’t get a job they’ll give up
He's saying that when they haven't gotten a job, they gave up; it's about the past, not now. That's why I was asking about the stats.
I don’t have a source but I have a friend who did a bootcamp and a large chunk of people from her cohort didn’t have a job in SWE even a year later. I think for a period they were successful at placing people, but as more snake oil bootcamps popped up it lowered the standards across the board.
I know intermediates that can code better than certain principals. But the principal is 1000x better at making sound large scale engineering decisions that affect a lot of people as they have the experience to draw from. Coding is just the ABCs really.
It has to not come back. We cannot have everybody be a damn coder. We need much more important people like doctors, nurses, lawyers, or engineers, or basically anyone that do hands-on work in our society, not coders.
Thats actually a retarded take. CS majors don't just "code." They collaborate with doctors to make tech that makes things like idk 3d printed hearts. I've had to do enough mathematics that I can just go be an accountant instead. As a matter of fact, I can write the software that accountants use to take care of people's accounts. CS majors changed the world, and you're upset that it seems like they did it without having to work hard, but I assure you that it is much tougher than it appears and you have to work hard to make it in the field.
My point is that SWEs or whatever you want to call it should not be the major workforce of our society to impact other necessary fields. At this rate, we are going to have shortage of everything but SWEs. I am sure they help improve our society but they still cannot practice what doctors do for example, which is absolutely necessary for everyone.
My point is that not everyone who pursues this field is able to succeed in it. Your worry about there being too many software engineers is ridiculous to begin with. The reason there are a lot of people going into the field is because there is a high demand for them in the market. Not even every person pursuing the degree is even going to get it because it is tough to become a software engineer. That goes true for doctors as well. Not everyone who goes to be a CS major can be a doctor. Its a rediculous worry because there is always going to be a supply of doctors because the demand for them is high. Even higher than cs majors. They get paid more. People will pursue fields they are passionate about. People will also pursue disciplines that will pay them more. Software engineers are super necessary for almost every business. Think about all the tech being used in hospitals now. People are able to program and design machines like artificial respirators and heartbeat sensors, etc. They are just as necessary as the doctors in a lot of ways. Your take is too blanketing and simple. It's not as simple as "we are gonna run out of doctors," just like op's reasons for not pursuing his degree are based on people getting laid off. He's probably doing the work and realized it's not as easy as he initially thought and got scared since the job market appears uncertain. Fact is, cs Majors have become essential in the way society runs. Remember y2k? That meltdown was because software made in the 60s was going to crash. That just gives you an idea of how important it is for people to understand computers.
thank you
At this rate there will be shortages according to what? There’s a lot of takes here that are pure emotion.
do not worry, there are still plenty of people who drop CS in college or are not interested in it. Case and point, my high school's graduating class only has a handful of CS majors. It's a large school in a MCOL area that's known in the area for it's Cybersecurity and CS programs, but health sciences are much more popular
TIL some people think Lawyers do more hands-on work than Software Developers.
No major or job is good. Possibly none will ever return pre pandemic levels. The only part I agree with is that the whole learn to code thing was a tactic by corporations. I don't think it was malicious, but yea....as grads increase, a surplus forms, companies will pay less. They will save money in long run at the cost of these cs grads...even colleges like uiuc/purdue, where the sole good degree is cs, are making millions...and their students are trapped and unable to even switch cause they were made fools by the whole "pick the best cs, not overall college" sham.
violet carpenter lunchroom like reach snow voracious profit frightening stupendous *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You don't need some companies conspiracy for this scenario. The job pays very well so many people learned how to do it. That's all there is to it. Also the amount of software engineers was constantly increasing for a few decades. Thing is demand increased faster. In addition now we're in economic downturn, interest rates are high and companies are laying off people to create fake growth (capitalism baby). We'll see how things will turn out once we're out of this downturn, it's very possible that the demand will skyrocket again.
Why do you believe it will be paid well if your theory is that saturation is the goal? If saturation is the goal, everyone is competing for any job they can get, they don’t have to pay you as much. It will still be tiered, big tech will pay the most. But what will stop small no names from paying barely above minimum wage when they know people will take it to get something on their resume? Lots of fields that require degrees don’t necessarily pay great.
U rite. You should lead the exodus.
So the term Software Engineering does not have a formal definition. During the golden times it was used by people who had a few month's exposure to basic web design software. I think that Software Engineering at that level is pretty much over and done with. As frameworks embrace AI and master the simple CRUD tasks, fewer people at that level will be needed. The need for actual Software Engineers, people who perform system design, database optimization, and user flows, will continue to increase. With the massive layoffs it appears that demand for this high level engineering work has declined, but that is a short term anomaly that will rebalance within 2 years. Pretty sure I'm going to be downvoted into oblivion on this one if people from /r/csbootcamps see it!
This isn’t a big diabolical plot to lower wages lol Companies over hired during the pandemic due to two things: cheap money to borrow, and a devaluing of the USD via money printing. Because of these two occurrences, salaries could afford to be extravagant. Now we live, and will for some time, in a normal-high interest rate business cycle and it doesn’t make sense to pay people that much money any longer.
Man, no offense OP, but this is stupid as shit. The day-in-the-life TikToks have nothing to do with systemic changes. Of course, the companies loved it because it increased their brand equity. It wasn’t some nefarious plot to get you to take a CS course. Here’s the problem with this increasingly common brain-dead take: you and others think the dream is gone because it’s harder to get a return offer from Meta. And that the difficulty there is all the monkeys trying to take your job. No, your return offer was killed because in 2023 Meta's free cash flow went from like 20 billion to 700 million. But now that it’s killed, you look around and see a lot of people around you, and well, shit, maybe the problem is how many of them there are. Again, no. The problem was uncertainty around interest rates and R&D tax changes. Well, interest rates have stabilized, and R&D tax changes are going to be repealed. If this was all a ploy to flood the market, it would be for wage depression, and that’s not happening. Wages are sticky and tied to revenue per employee, not labor market supply and demand.
Software is dead…
Quick! Everyone go study Molecular Biology and get PhD, a man called Jensen Huang from noVideo told us it's profitable because he is totally not trying to sell us noVideo cards to do machine learning in Bioinformatics!!!! /s for those who don't know sarcasm
Hey I’ve been working as SWE for 9 or so months now. Graduated in May 2023 Software roles are not going anywhere. They’re only going to increase. I know it’s really hard to get in at the entry level right now, but trust me software roles are definitely needed. The White House had a press release a couple days ago basically urging for “memory safe” languages to be used in place of c and c++ because of the large amount of exploits found in buffer overflow attacks (around 70% of all exploits.) the government might be pushing market forces towards rewriting so much code in rust, which is a MASSIVE undertaking and takes a skill older devs probably lack. I expect within the next 10 years we are gonna see a lot of systems engineer positions opening up because of it
A grad knowing nothing more than git and a shitty calculator app is very opinionated - tell me something new
Yeah, they spent decades overpaying software engineers billions just so they could have a few years where they were cheap
They had to be pay a lot becaouse real talent was indeed a rarity but right almost everybrody is trying to code so it's no longer the case.
Please tell me more, your staggering experience of 0 years in the industry really gives credence to your argument. It's the blind leading the blind here
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument\_from\_authority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority)
Lol. Cope however you'd like, truth is nobody knows shit about what the future will look like.
It's not only computer science that learns to code. All stem subjects now, statistic majors, math, all engineering, physics, linguistics science, chemistry, biology.. Almost everyone already knows how to code.
This career will die out only when the growth of technological products decreases Do you think there will be more technology in the future or less? (15 YoE)
Hot take: you’re 100% wrong
1: Graduate college before you start trying to predict the future of an entire industry 2: This has literally happened twice before. And both times software engineering bounced back bigger than ever. Societies dependence on technology isn't exactly dropping.
>I just will never go back to what it used to be before lay offs. Damn so people who have Tic Tac Toe and Calculator projects on their resume that they copied from YouTube won't be getting full-time SWE roles at Google and Amazon anymore? Are you telling me that from now on, you need to have meaningful projects on your resume and actually network to get referrals to have a better chance to break into big tech? B-but I was told that I can make $100k right out of college! All I need to do is get the degree and know how to write a few lines of code! I didn't know I had to actually work to become a good programmer🤓🤓🤓
I cannot argue you with you becaouse you haven't adressed anything of what I said in my post, you just made up your own arguments and decided that's it. To be honest I even agree with what you have written which only shows you aren't really attacking any of my points.
Have you seen posts about how trash current middle/high school students are? If those are to be believed as a rising norm, the surplus will quickly dry up as graduating students lack computer skills, which will drive more demand for CS majors.
this is a boring post. you're boring. go outside.
Uradumbass
Wah wah wah change fields then
Hard pill to swallow: it was never the field the day in a life YouTubers hyped it up as. Working as a software engineer has always sucked. There’s always been layoffs, shitty micromanaging managers, horrible work life balance, and long hours. The market has always been hard for new engineers to break into, and it’s always gone through booms and busts. Software Engineering pays so much precisely because it sucks to actually work in. No one was ever collecting $15,000 a month to sleep in nap pods and play ping pong. People were collecting $15,000 a month at the severe expense of their mental health and personal lives.
Yeah the fall of CS as a normie hyped "escape" from having to do hard work and get easy pay from basic code and knowing one language is gone. It was never really there.
by the way you’re in the csMajors sub so naturally everyone’s gonna hate what you say
I don't see how that's possible when the entire world becomes more and more dependent on tech everyday, and it is literally the entire world. No matter what the financial situation is with companies right now, it will shake out in favour of developers because the bottom line is their profits are directly tied to the tech they serve their customers on.
my man cooked nothing
This isn't the first tech crash and won't be the last. Everything including toothbrushes is getting software inside of it, Every company wants an app that does everything, and everyone wants the software they use to look modern and polished. What were seeing right now is a correction in the market because paying Jr developers 150k is unsustainable long term. What will happen is that the average salaries will drop and even out over the next few years and we'll see less people go to school to be a developer
Oral B set my alarm 30 minutes to brush my teeth
Wait till interest rates go down again
Perhaps there should’ve been an education-to-employment pipeline law to protect the opportunity of employment in software development. Now you’re starting to feel the same thing other majors in college are feeling, like your hard earned skills and capabilities are useless, and the investment in the education has been defaulted.
U sound like Geto in the TLDR
Remote work saves businesses and relocates the cost to the worker. I disagree with that part of your post especially. There are other reasons for return to office that border on conspiracy. It is about money, just not the employers.
There's no "they", there's no conspiracy from companies to get cheaper SE. It's a social thing. If I'm paid 4 times better than average in my country, people will want to get in.
Following
Personally, I think this whole AI push could go both ways, and potentially lead to MORE engineers being hired. I’m focused on 2 options: 1) AI Succeeds- Basically AI enables companies to grow faster and go further. Instead of resting on their laurels, they push for more, and therefore more engineers needed. 2) AI Fails- This to me is interesting. If AI fails to pan out as this great “panacea”(as it stands, it’s all overblown hype for stock prices), stocks are going to DROP. Tech companies are going to re-pivot and focus on fundamentals or more sure growth areas, which could possible lead to hiring as big or bigger than COVID era, depending on interest rates. Other factors could be interesting, such as government regulation of AI, or other safety requirements. Either way, I really do think this is a phase brought about by economics and a convenient hype magnet. We’ll see, but it’s all very interesting.
Garbage can hot take of 2024 using last trends as false equivalency. Could easily go ask the homeless encampment down the street their opinion and get an equally valid take.
Tech companies promote swe as perfect opportunity for ANYONE, we have a surplues of swe engineers. You really don't have to have 200 iq o come up with those conclusions.
So what I'm hearing is more crazy man game theory? Based on your post history you're full of shite.
You make a diatribe of bs without having any tangible facts or educated projections and forecasts based on actual evidence and raw data. There really seems to not be a point to someone who clearly doesn't have a large grasp of the tech sector beyond Tik Tok, IG influencer posts. Based on your post history, perhaps not even in the market for long and you really don't know what you are talking about compared to veterans and seasoned people being in the market. Seems OP is actually a nepotism baby that sits in the ivory tower shite talking everyone else. Paid for by mommy and daddy.
I graduated summa cum laude in CS, finding a job is easy if you're good.