In my experience, good candidates (including interns/juniors) are still landing the roles. Hiring in tech/design/product is tough because there’s a deluge of applicants who’ve either coasted during the boom, or been sold a lie by an educational institution.
You can spot the ones who apply for 40 jobs a week, and those who’ve used chatGPT a mile off, and they’re usually the worst candidates, with long, bland, unfocused resumes.
LinkedIn is full of my worst ex-colleagues bemoaning the lack of opportunities, like they’re entitled to it.
Please tell me if I’m being unfair. Maybe I should be less cynical.
I’ve been saying for years that the market is saturated with too many people with too many expectations. Universities are out of touch with the actual job market and need to stop recruiting so many people into CS or engineering programs.
Unfortunately it seems there are no consequences for the universities, and it’s not hard to make those qualifications seem both alluring and lucrative.
There’s got to be a way to hold them to account for the countless graduates who don’t end up finding industry positions.
It’s the job of universities to recruit and train people. They are offering the degrees people want. Not sure why they should be punished for that. It’s really the students and families going in with unrealistic expectations that is an issue here.
You’re right in my experience, I graduated highschool in 2016 and I remember how hard they pushed comp sci as some sort of magic success bullet. I thought I was terrible at math and kids who I knew weren’t much better were choosing it as a major. I genuinely think in 10 years we’re going to find out guidance councilers were being paid kick backs by colleges à la the pharma industry.
You are being unfair. I have been searching for 6+ months for a position in IT, had 2 companies that paid $40k+/yr, 1st one didn’t pan out, 2nd one is in progress. Countless $15-20k/yr offers though. I am in Europe looking for remote only positions in any form of tech support, python programming but preferrably linux server/desktop support. I don’t use AI, all applications are written by me. My CV is 2 pages, modern theme. 10 years experience.
Where in Europe? Depending on the country the IT job markets are wildly different.
I’m probably in an echo chamber. I hope that 2nd application goes well for you.
I don’t believe you are in a bubble. My experience matches with your initial assertion. We just recently hired for 3 SRE roles.
Hundreds of applicants in a 24 hour window.
We had people using some kind of LLM tool during interviews, obviously so. Others were sharing the same resume with only slight modifications, and plenty of folks who couldn’t pass the screening call or a very simple tech interview.
We also had wildly unprofessional candidates who were no-shows, or had profane/NSFW desktops or couldn’t even use a terminal - for an SRE role.
So no, you’re not alone. The great candidates get hired, headhunted even.
Project manager is not a tech job.
Say you don’t work in tech without saying you don’t work in tech.
I’m a dev. Love them or hate them, PMs are vital to success of projects.
Of the 30-50 PMs I’ve worked with in my career, I’ve had 2 actively contribute to the success of my team’s work. I’ve had a handful scuttle projects because they couldn’t manage the clients, the rest just kind of hung out and collected a massive paycheck.
The highest performing teams I’ve been on had the lead developer play that role.
The role is vital, the PM it’s self is not.
Completely agreed that the role is vital. For me, my PM is a life saver as my workload is simply too much to also handle PM duties.
That’s said, I also agree that there are many useless PMs. But a good one is worth their weight in gold.
Good PMs are vital to the success of projects, and bad PMs are vital to their failure.
This right here. I have worked with a dozen PMs in 30 years, only two were any damn good. One managed an IT team, and she didn’t know tech worth squat, but God damn, did she keep the flow going and know how to get shit done without being an ass about it.
On the other hand, I faught with a PM once because he didn’t understand the concept of priorities or how to manage a crisis. “You want me to fix the outage or attend a meeting about it?” “Both.” “Pick one. You have a choice. I can fix the issue in the data center, or join a blame session in the meeting room. Which one?” “BOTH!” I got to the meeting room, and he demanded we put down our laptops and pay attention. He invited EVERYBODY regardless of whether they were needed or not. Twenty seven people all bitching about the outage and not a single person fixing it. No meeting moderation. Just chaos until he had a panic attack. Just useless.
I got a project now that doesn’t have one and you can definitely see it. Stuff is being missed left and right. All the different companies aren’t talking together. A few months back I just straight up recommended that they bring a PM to the lead scientist and they weren’t interested. So far I would say they have made a total of 90k mistakes on a 850k project.
If you’re a project manager in IT, and you don’t have a technical background, you can fuck right off.
It’s absolutely a tech job if it’s being done right.
Cry me a river. You guys work from home, get all your meals expensed, and make $200k+
Tech industry has been due for a correction for a long time.
Edit: your tears of rage sustain and vitalize me
This just plain isn’t true for the vast majority of engineers. And exceptions occur in any industry. Focus your anger on billionaires and companies rather than your peers.
I recently started making more money, but until very recently tech workers were not my peers. They’re upper middle class and have very little in common with me. Sure, I’ll side with them against the ownership class, but calling them “peers” is a stretch.
As long as you’re not joining forces with the rest of us peons against the billionaires their plan is working.
If you seriously believe we still have a middle class, let alone an upper section of it, I’ve got a bridge to sell you
You know why they are your peers even before the salary bump you mention? Because you are INFINITELY closer to them then you are the upper class elite.
You need to zoom out and stop bashing heads with your fellow workers simply because they don’t perform the exact same job for same compensation.
They are still your peers when it comes to the battle of workers vs employers. Sure, put it in a different context and it may sound wrong.
Ikr, I’m guessing these 200k positions are being scooped up before I see them.
Woo boy, if you’re angry about that, wait until you hear about their owners.
We need to unionize, or the existing Tech/Communications unions need to get better and expand to include us.
We also need to force tech departments to stop offshoring their workers, I love our Indian tech Bros as much as the next guy, but companies need to hire local first rather than ripping off Indian tech Bros on the cheap just because they can.
And lastly, let remote workers who can do their jobs perfectly fine working remote stay remote, there is absolutely no reason why someone who works in cloud or virtualization technologies should have to be onsite, same with developers, same with so many other positions, both tech and standard.
The labor force just gained tens of thousands of America’s most talented engineers, and as you pointed out, they likely have the funds to choose their next job carefully. I’m optimistic about what they will do!
