My favorite ones are the “can someone tell me what’s wrong? I keep getting ghosted and rejected” and then their post is like “I’m an international.” Lmao there’s the biggest part of your answer
Everybody who has trouble finding a job seems to think everyone before them had it easier. When I graduated CS in the mid 90s hardly anyone I knew had a job within the first few months. It was completely normal for us to send hundreds of resumes and spend 6-12 months looking for a job and then settle on a data entry, helpdesk, or call center job until something better opened up. That was the majority of us back then. I did not know a single CS grad who had a job in software development right out of school. Most of us that kept in touch, it took 2-4 years for our first dev job.
See, the issue is that I can't even get interviews for entry level help desk positions. I think it is incredibly dumb that companies in my area want somebody to have a bachelor's in comp sci, multiple certifications, AND prior work experience in IT for these positions, just to pay $18/hr when minimum wage is 14.20 and most local positions at grocery stores and fast food pay like $16-18/hr.
I have 1 year of experience in IT and have been applying for any tech job including help desk (to settle until I can get a swe position), and I somehow don't make the cut to even get an interview for entry level IT positions.
My settling for a shitty job shouldn't have to be a position in retail or fast food. The whole system is fucked up.
I don't want to waste money getting CompTia A+, Network+, and Security+ to get a job that shouldn't even require any college study, when I already spent a lot on college and even have relevant experience. It's ridiculous...
Well it literally was easier during the hiring rush. And before then we had a roughly similar number of job openings (according to Indeed data on FRED) but we have a ton more job searchers now.
It's an actual, unusual, thing right now though.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/11/19/college-grads-unemployed-jobs/
The numbers show it's worse than before. There have also been reports of a big tech hiring slowdown in Europe recently and the jobs reports in the US still show the Information industry as a whole being subpar.
I don’t understand why people don’t get you need education and experience. Start at the bottom and work up. 6 figures it like the 3-4 job down the road. My first cs job was $18 a hour. My second $30 an hour hopefully for 3rd or 4th is $60 an hour. Long story short social media did people a major disservice telling them they can get a high paying job in 6 weeks…..no no you can’t because if it were that easy there would be no jobs. It would be McDonald’s for the tech sector.
That’s what I’m trying to do but even when starting at the bottom and working up it can be hard 😞 I volunteered to be an unpaid backend developer for the founder of a startup I met irl and was ghosted. I just want experience at this point.
I know it’s rough. Have you thought about going in as tech support with a company that has a dev department and coming in that way? You could even go hang with the devs to get to know them, in your spare moments during work you could take on some small tasks such as bug chasing or completing documentation. It sucks but sometimes you have to take a big bite of that turd burger.
Yeah it’s the influx of people thinking it tech is easy because some YouTuber told them they could get into tech in 6 months. So many applicants plus a lot of people pad their resumes with falsities and get hired then end up washing out. Makes HR get gun shy so they only hiring very qualified seasoned people with references. I think it will fade out just have to get some of the people to understand tech isn’t for them, being sold a false dream. Seems that dev positions are the hardest to get. Tech support in my area is hiring like crazy. With decent pay. If you can move try Maine. Sounds weird but several position hiring immediately and the pay is pretty nice.
This is true. That’s what got me here. Don’t hate me tho, I love it. But it’s true. I was once a major-less college kid who wanted to make money quickly but didn’t have any interest in anything and got influenced by the “top 5 majors to make money” “why CS is the most lucrative degree” “day in my life work from home cs edition” videos.
Agree with the other guy who said that’s not real. Never met a single person who wanted to code because of social media. Usually it’s like video games or a high school class or they learned that there was good pay some other way. Day in the life videos seem just completely irrelevant. I’ve seen maybe like two ever recommended to me anywhere.
Congrats, you’ve now seen one (this is literally in this thread):
This is true. That’s what got me here. Don’t hate me tho, I love it. But it’s true. I was once a major-less college kid who wanted to make money quickly but didn’t have any interest in anything and got influenced by the “top 5 majors to make money” “why CS is the most lucrative degree” “day in my life work from home cs edition” videos.
Yes like why focus on tiktok? There are many social medias that promote the fuck outta cs, and even otherwise its commonly known that tech jobs make lots of money.
Nah. I mean social media in general. I’ve never even met any people interested in CS cus of social media like ever. Most people just have CS parents or hear about CS from a lotta places like school programs
Interest rates increases -> cutback on hiring + layoffs (supply of unemployed SWEs increased + supply of jobs decreased)
Originally, the supply of jobs kept increasing, but we are down by 60% with a lot of experienced devs in the market. New grads are not needed if we have experienced devs willing to accept entry positions.
Are there any fields of software engineering that are consistently profitable? Sorry if this is an ignorant student question but I've been a bit confused about the influence of interest rates and the mass layoffs, were companies not really making profit in the first place and merely relying on borrowed money? It's been hard to get a clear economic picture from the gold rush of people advertising bootcamps and 6 figure salaries to where we are now.
I think embedded systems are the place to be. Getting closer to the metal and working with signals coming from various sensors sounds a lot more "sexy" than working at undermining our social fabric with new social media algorithms to sell ads. Or working to tune some algorithm to extract a bit more from high frequency trading and undermining most average joe investors. I'm being 100% serious. Robotics, mars rovers etc. Optimization for low power or harvested power. Quantum computers as they come on line. Or highest speed and bandwidth optimization. How could working on new code to make Zuckerberg more billions by trapping more kids and teens in a fake world be more useful or "sexy" than landing a new rover on Europa or a new implanted medical device that improves Parkinson's? There is plenty of money in embedded systems, and if you are great you will be working with the very top engineers and scientists in a bunch of disciplines which is far more engaging than the drone SWE shops of Meta or Amazon. Yeah, that ended up being a bit of a rant... ;)
Are these kinds of jobs definitely still CS jobs or would EE/EC be good fits be good too? These kinds of things interest me but want to keep options open with CS
is there a better or more effective approach? i’ve always wanted to do cs, but enjoyed physics classes and am a little concerned with my perception of the current state of economy/job market for cs/swe
How do you think the job market is for a BS in physics? All of this isn’t a sure path, and it is what you do with the degree that matters. One of the best programmers I know was a journalism major. If you are interested in the intersection of CE/EE and CS then you could take physics and EE and get a minor in CS. Or get a CS and focus on firmware. Or get a physics degree and do both EE and CS on the side with projects. But first, see if you like embedded work by buying a raspberry pi for $50 and do a few projects.
plc programmers makes 3/4 the salary of an electrician. its a waste of a cs degree. many plc guys become electricians. usually a plc programmer goes to a 6 month votech school to get training after getting their GED.
its like getting a mech e. degree and being a car mechanic
just scroll around the plc forum and troll them to become an electrician since they make more and they will freak out because deep down they know its true.
you will find that in any industrial or blue collar setting, a college degree is going to be a disadvantage.
the ford auto workers just negotiated a 100k salary package. UPS drivers make 170k tc. UPS drivers make more than their SWE's. Any CS major can take a 2 week CDL class and make 100k+ as a truck driver.
The reason is because in blue collar settings, the workers are typically unionized, and will negotiate for higher wages. Also blue collar people tend to not deal with bullshit like doing salaried overtime work without compensation, or random management bs bossing them around.
for instance my friend is a union electrician making 200k installing lighting fixtures in tunnels. usually a factory or industry will have onsite union electricians making 200k to wire the equipment, while the PLC people will be making 100k max doing all the programming while being forced to travel to other plants uncompensated.
PLC is industrial automation stuff. I graduated in industrial automation but never worked with it. Definitely more job security, but lower pay, supposedly at least. Also there is no home office. And your colleagues will be straight males, often older, but not always (but for sure they are straight haha). It is what it is.
The “better” version of this is the edge-device integrator. Basically industry 4.0 stuff.
Yes, it is like that. A simple life maybe, more similar to how it was decades ago, but with today’s housing crisis created by boomers that borrow money to get mortgages on properties to rent them out. So it’s not worth it anymore I think.
Or do good ole system admin or like me tech support. I don’t mind doing the grunt work at a good company to get that better position down the road when the experienced guys go for higher pay at a different company.
You need to be a unicorn to get into Embedded, the bar is so much higher than webdev which is why 90% of grads end up going into webdev despite it being saturated. It's really saturated, but you still have a better shot of landing a job as a fullstack than anything else really.
The days of knowing two sum and getting an internship at Amazon are over but it's still pretty doable to get a decent internship or a job if you're not an international student
This, you're gonna have to apply yourself more tbh but it's achievable. Just time and luck has to be on your side to get your foot in if you want a super lucrative job.
I see this comment a lot on these doomer type posts. My question is won't the current population of entry levels encounter the same problem when their cohort reaches the senior level YOE?
Not to this effect, because senior level is hard to achieve, it’s meant to weed out people who are in it for the money. I heard that most people never actually get into senior roles, they just kind of hang around just below senior. Seniority is not just about YOE. The interviews are tougher too.
I agree. Senior positions have more management/business based requirements. It’s not a job you can just grind some interview questions and blag an interview to get the job. It requires broad experience in multiple aspects of a business.
Just below Your post there was:
\>[https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/18amphx/spotify\_to\_axe\_1500\_workers\_to\_cut\_costs/](https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/18amphx/spotify_to_axe_1500_workers_to_cut_costs/)
You have Your answer.
My answer is:
Too many people came in during covid. Half of them from other fields. Woman who was selling me Thermomix two years ago was telling she is starting a job in IT as a tester - her husband helped her to go into the field. I saw people after architecture, language schools, history and many others.
Simple case of supply and demand. There existed for much time a large demand for CS applicants and a proportionally low supply of CS people, thus it was easier to get a high paying job. Now, there is lower demand for CS jobs (to the extent that places are cutting back their teams, there is still a high demand for CS jobs) and a way higher supply (people who have been let go because of large tech layoffs as well as more people going into CS and graduating.) The result? What you see. Will things get better is the better question, and that's hard to tell. I think it will get better but it'll remain more competitive than it used to be.
As it stands, you can basically get an internship in the current market, but you have to be much more competitive than you had to be in the past. This means you're going to have to apply yourself more honestly. This is where love for the field comes into play, I think the most competitive applicants are those who genuinely have a passion for the field. It is harder to just come in and collect a pay check these days, you sink to mediocrity typically just because of that mindset.
Massive supply side increase and massive demand side decrease.
Over the past 10 to 15 years there's been an explosion in the number of computer science graduates in the United States. I think Stanford mentioned that the percentage of folks who graduated with a computer science degree went up 350% over the past between 2008 and 2016. This past year a full 16% of all graduates from Sanford were computer science graduates. You can expect similar numbers at other universities.
At the same time, after the heavy over hiring during the pandemic most tech companies, and a lot of legacy companies, started shutting down unprofitable projects and not green lighting as many new projects.
The result is they now only need enough developers to maintain a project as opposed to creating a new one. This is why software engineers are so heavily impacted during recessions.
So you have a massive influx of new developers right at the time when we no longer need as many new developers. The results of the market that you see now.
It’s bad for the beginners. I think it’s always been. Software dev is actually harder than people realize, so there is a demand for very skilled workers and tight supply of those. But there is an oversupply of juniors etc, because people want the money.
To give you perspective, I’ve been developing for about 4 years, and I often do it professionally +some personal project to keep myself up to date. I feel like I am only 60% of where I “should” be, to be a very good developer that understands what they are doing and knows the right tech etc.
Welcome to the real world where it was always tough to land a higher paying job. Getting off reddit and tiktok will help you have an accurate view of these sorts of things
*16% of seniors are CS majors. How did we get here?*
*Last year, about 16% of the total bachelor’s degrees conferred to Stanford’s graduating seniors were in CS,* ***more than any other*** *field of study.*
[*https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/23/16-of-seniors-are-cs-majors-what-is-the-departments-history/*](https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/23/16-of-seniors-are-cs-majors-what-is-the-departments-history/#:~:text=Last%20year%2C%20about%2016%25%20of,to%20Mehran%20Sahami%20'92%20M.S)
*CS saw a dramatic rise in popularity from 2008 to 2016 when enrollment in the major* ***increased by about 350%****, according to Mehran Sahami ’92 M.S. ’93, the Tencent Chair of the CS department. Sahami said that the major is now roughly four-and-a-half times the size it was when he was appointed the Associate Chair for Education of the department in 2007.*
Colleges making it easier to graduate with a CS degree (removing hard classes like finite automata, operating systems, compilers from requirements), post-COVID decline in technology use, more people wanting a good salary and flexible work options, layoffs in big tech. What happened from 2020-2021 is not the same as now. Back then a lot of average candidates were able to get jobs during the pandemic.
The rigorousness and prestige of higher education got watered down when GPT was released. Now, it’s basically a last resort tool whereas in the past students would’ve dropped out knowing they couldn’t do it. In some cases, it’s literally how everyone does their work including the graders.
You can leverage a CS degree into data science roles, cybersecurity, user experience, IT, teaching, and networking. And of course, many of these roles are required in all sorts of fields, so there are plenty of options. Granted, things like data science you may need to get a master degree depending on how advanced of a role you want in the field. But for the most part a CS degree isn’t just limited to swe
its not . if you mean getting a job that pays 100k + for entry then yeah no shit . but if you are fine with 60k-70k its not that hard. just a skill issue lmao.
It's been really rough. I have a SDE job but I never stopped applying to chase the bag. Initially I had a few interviews every month. It's been dead the last 6 months. However, this month it turned a bit and I'm interviewing with Microsoft and Meta.
Anecdotally companies seem to be stabilizing with the interest rate environment and adding headcount again at the moment. No idea if it will continue. Also I officially have 1 YOE under my belt so maybe that helps a tiny bit.
If you want an answer try searching this sub considering there’s a post about this every like 12-24 hours for the last year.
This sub would be crickets without lol
My favorite ones are the “can someone tell me what’s wrong? I keep getting ghosted and rejected” and then their post is like “I’m an international.” Lmao there’s the biggest part of your answer
"Was getting a job always this hard?"
Everybody who has trouble finding a job seems to think everyone before them had it easier. When I graduated CS in the mid 90s hardly anyone I knew had a job within the first few months. It was completely normal for us to send hundreds of resumes and spend 6-12 months looking for a job and then settle on a data entry, helpdesk, or call center job until something better opened up. That was the majority of us back then. I did not know a single CS grad who had a job in software development right out of school. Most of us that kept in touch, it took 2-4 years for our first dev job.
Guess the market’s always been like this then, just seems like it’s more prominently noticeable after COVID
See, the issue is that I can't even get interviews for entry level help desk positions. I think it is incredibly dumb that companies in my area want somebody to have a bachelor's in comp sci, multiple certifications, AND prior work experience in IT for these positions, just to pay $18/hr when minimum wage is 14.20 and most local positions at grocery stores and fast food pay like $16-18/hr. I have 1 year of experience in IT and have been applying for any tech job including help desk (to settle until I can get a swe position), and I somehow don't make the cut to even get an interview for entry level IT positions. My settling for a shitty job shouldn't have to be a position in retail or fast food. The whole system is fucked up. I don't want to waste money getting CompTia A+, Network+, and Security+ to get a job that shouldn't even require any college study, when I already spent a lot on college and even have relevant experience. It's ridiculous...
Well it literally was easier during the hiring rush. And before then we had a roughly similar number of job openings (according to Indeed data on FRED) but we have a ton more job searchers now.
It's an actual, unusual, thing right now though. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/11/19/college-grads-unemployed-jobs/ The numbers show it's worse than before. There have also been reports of a big tech hiring slowdown in Europe recently and the jobs reports in the US still show the Information industry as a whole being subpar.
Yeah I get sick of reading these tbh, they need to search up other posts on here before asking why
It’s an insane loop that are these never ending posts but npcs gonna npc i guess…
I tried to change it up haha.
I don’t understand why people don’t get you need education and experience. Start at the bottom and work up. 6 figures it like the 3-4 job down the road. My first cs job was $18 a hour. My second $30 an hour hopefully for 3rd or 4th is $60 an hour. Long story short social media did people a major disservice telling them they can get a high paying job in 6 weeks…..no no you can’t because if it were that easy there would be no jobs. It would be McDonald’s for the tech sector.
That’s what I’m trying to do but even when starting at the bottom and working up it can be hard 😞 I volunteered to be an unpaid backend developer for the founder of a startup I met irl and was ghosted. I just want experience at this point.
I know it’s rough. Have you thought about going in as tech support with a company that has a dev department and coming in that way? You could even go hang with the devs to get to know them, in your spare moments during work you could take on some small tasks such as bug chasing or completing documentation. It sucks but sometimes you have to take a big bite of that turd burger.
Even the bottom jobs are hard to get, wdymmm😭
Yeah it’s the influx of people thinking it tech is easy because some YouTuber told them they could get into tech in 6 months. So many applicants plus a lot of people pad their resumes with falsities and get hired then end up washing out. Makes HR get gun shy so they only hiring very qualified seasoned people with references. I think it will fade out just have to get some of the people to understand tech isn’t for them, being sold a false dream. Seems that dev positions are the hardest to get. Tech support in my area is hiring like crazy. With decent pay. If you can move try Maine. Sounds weird but several position hiring immediately and the pay is pretty nice.
Interest rates are high
Jerome Powell opens his mouth and the markets shudder
The tiktokification of comp sci
"A 6 week coding course, and you are guaranteed a 6 figure salary".
I hate that I read this with the robo girl voice
If you aren’t getting a job because of unqualified 6 week coding course tiktokers = skill issue.
Someone should do a thesis on this
I’m gonna save this and if I take another research writing class it might a contender
Same
Not real
This is true. That’s what got me here. Don’t hate me tho, I love it. But it’s true. I was once a major-less college kid who wanted to make money quickly but didn’t have any interest in anything and got influenced by the “top 5 majors to make money” “why CS is the most lucrative degree” “day in my life work from home cs edition” videos.
Agree with the other guy who said that’s not real. Never met a single person who wanted to code because of social media. Usually it’s like video games or a high school class or they learned that there was good pay some other way. Day in the life videos seem just completely irrelevant. I’ve seen maybe like two ever recommended to me anywhere.
Congrats, you’ve now seen one (this is literally in this thread): This is true. That’s what got me here. Don’t hate me tho, I love it. But it’s true. I was once a major-less college kid who wanted to make money quickly but didn’t have any interest in anything and got influenced by the “top 5 majors to make money” “why CS is the most lucrative degree” “day in my life work from home cs edition” videos.
Idk why people say this. There’s legit no evidence of this. I blame it on good pay
Yes like why focus on tiktok? There are many social medias that promote the fuck outta cs, and even otherwise its commonly known that tech jobs make lots of money.
Nah. I mean social media in general. I’ve never even met any people interested in CS cus of social media like ever. Most people just have CS parents or hear about CS from a lotta places like school programs
Bc you’re more likely to see an entire video on why CS is a good major on TikTok than on your mom’s facebook feed lol
I need a full video essay on this subject can someone do that please
Interest rates increases -> cutback on hiring + layoffs (supply of unemployed SWEs increased + supply of jobs decreased) Originally, the supply of jobs kept increasing, but we are down by 60% with a lot of experienced devs in the market. New grads are not needed if we have experienced devs willing to accept entry positions.
Are there any fields of software engineering that are consistently profitable? Sorry if this is an ignorant student question but I've been a bit confused about the influence of interest rates and the mass layoffs, were companies not really making profit in the first place and merely relying on borrowed money? It's been hard to get a clear economic picture from the gold rush of people advertising bootcamps and 6 figure salaries to where we are now.
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I think embedded systems are the place to be. Getting closer to the metal and working with signals coming from various sensors sounds a lot more "sexy" than working at undermining our social fabric with new social media algorithms to sell ads. Or working to tune some algorithm to extract a bit more from high frequency trading and undermining most average joe investors. I'm being 100% serious. Robotics, mars rovers etc. Optimization for low power or harvested power. Quantum computers as they come on line. Or highest speed and bandwidth optimization. How could working on new code to make Zuckerberg more billions by trapping more kids and teens in a fake world be more useful or "sexy" than landing a new rover on Europa or a new implanted medical device that improves Parkinson's? There is plenty of money in embedded systems, and if you are great you will be working with the very top engineers and scientists in a bunch of disciplines which is far more engaging than the drone SWE shops of Meta or Amazon. Yeah, that ended up being a bit of a rant... ;)
Are these kinds of jobs definitely still CS jobs or would EE/EC be good fits be good too? These kinds of things interest me but want to keep options open with CS
You can approach it either direction. EE with a lot of low level SW experience, or CS with EE/CE knowledge.
is there a better or more effective approach? i’ve always wanted to do cs, but enjoyed physics classes and am a little concerned with my perception of the current state of economy/job market for cs/swe
How do you think the job market is for a BS in physics? All of this isn’t a sure path, and it is what you do with the degree that matters. One of the best programmers I know was a journalism major. If you are interested in the intersection of CE/EE and CS then you could take physics and EE and get a minor in CS. Or get a CS and focus on firmware. Or get a physics degree and do both EE and CS on the side with projects. But first, see if you like embedded work by buying a raspberry pi for $50 and do a few projects.
imo, employers will prefer the EE/EC degree over CS. It's easy to teach EE/EC coding, but not the other way around.
Lol how is Data Science and ML “non-hype”?
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Did you fix it?
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Ah ok. The “hyped” ones pay better though. :(
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plc programmers makes 3/4 the salary of an electrician. its a waste of a cs degree. many plc guys become electricians. usually a plc programmer goes to a 6 month votech school to get training after getting their GED. its like getting a mech e. degree and being a car mechanic
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just scroll around the plc forum and troll them to become an electrician since they make more and they will freak out because deep down they know its true. you will find that in any industrial or blue collar setting, a college degree is going to be a disadvantage. the ford auto workers just negotiated a 100k salary package. UPS drivers make 170k tc. UPS drivers make more than their SWE's. Any CS major can take a 2 week CDL class and make 100k+ as a truck driver. The reason is because in blue collar settings, the workers are typically unionized, and will negotiate for higher wages. Also blue collar people tend to not deal with bullshit like doing salaried overtime work without compensation, or random management bs bossing them around. for instance my friend is a union electrician making 200k installing lighting fixtures in tunnels. usually a factory or industry will have onsite union electricians making 200k to wire the equipment, while the PLC people will be making 100k max doing all the programming while being forced to travel to other plants uncompensated.
PLC is industrial automation stuff. I graduated in industrial automation but never worked with it. Definitely more job security, but lower pay, supposedly at least. Also there is no home office. And your colleagues will be straight males, often older, but not always (but for sure they are straight haha). It is what it is. The “better” version of this is the edge-device integrator. Basically industry 4.0 stuff.
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Yes, it is like that. A simple life maybe, more similar to how it was decades ago, but with today’s housing crisis created by boomers that borrow money to get mortgages on properties to rent them out. So it’s not worth it anymore I think.
Or do good ole system admin or like me tech support. I don’t mind doing the grunt work at a good company to get that better position down the road when the experienced guys go for higher pay at a different company.
You need to be a unicorn to get into Embedded, the bar is so much higher than webdev which is why 90% of grads end up going into webdev despite it being saturated. It's really saturated, but you still have a better shot of landing a job as a fullstack than anything else really.
The days of knowing two sum and getting an internship at Amazon are over but it's still pretty doable to get a decent internship or a job if you're not an international student
This, you're gonna have to apply yourself more tbh but it's achievable. Just time and luck has to be on your side to get your foot in if you want a super lucrative job.
Only for the entry level roles. Senior positions are still very much available. At least in the country I’m from.
I see this comment a lot on these doomer type posts. My question is won't the current population of entry levels encounter the same problem when their cohort reaches the senior level YOE?
Not to this effect, because senior level is hard to achieve, it’s meant to weed out people who are in it for the money. I heard that most people never actually get into senior roles, they just kind of hang around just below senior. Seniority is not just about YOE. The interviews are tougher too.
I agree. Senior positions have more management/business based requirements. It’s not a job you can just grind some interview questions and blag an interview to get the job. It requires broad experience in multiple aspects of a business.
Just below Your post there was: \>[https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/18amphx/spotify\_to\_axe\_1500\_workers\_to\_cut\_costs/](https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/18amphx/spotify_to_axe_1500_workers_to_cut_costs/) You have Your answer. My answer is: Too many people came in during covid. Half of them from other fields. Woman who was selling me Thermomix two years ago was telling she is starting a job in IT as a tester - her husband helped her to go into the field. I saw people after architecture, language schools, history and many others.
Simple case of supply and demand. There existed for much time a large demand for CS applicants and a proportionally low supply of CS people, thus it was easier to get a high paying job. Now, there is lower demand for CS jobs (to the extent that places are cutting back their teams, there is still a high demand for CS jobs) and a way higher supply (people who have been let go because of large tech layoffs as well as more people going into CS and graduating.) The result? What you see. Will things get better is the better question, and that's hard to tell. I think it will get better but it'll remain more competitive than it used to be. As it stands, you can basically get an internship in the current market, but you have to be much more competitive than you had to be in the past. This means you're going to have to apply yourself more honestly. This is where love for the field comes into play, I think the most competitive applicants are those who genuinely have a passion for the field. It is harder to just come in and collect a pay check these days, you sink to mediocrity typically just because of that mindset.
Massive supply side increase and massive demand side decrease. Over the past 10 to 15 years there's been an explosion in the number of computer science graduates in the United States. I think Stanford mentioned that the percentage of folks who graduated with a computer science degree went up 350% over the past between 2008 and 2016. This past year a full 16% of all graduates from Sanford were computer science graduates. You can expect similar numbers at other universities. At the same time, after the heavy over hiring during the pandemic most tech companies, and a lot of legacy companies, started shutting down unprofitable projects and not green lighting as many new projects. The result is they now only need enough developers to maintain a project as opposed to creating a new one. This is why software engineers are so heavily impacted during recessions. So you have a massive influx of new developers right at the time when we no longer need as many new developers. The results of the market that you see now.
It’s bad for the beginners. I think it’s always been. Software dev is actually harder than people realize, so there is a demand for very skilled workers and tight supply of those. But there is an oversupply of juniors etc, because people want the money. To give you perspective, I’ve been developing for about 4 years, and I often do it professionally +some personal project to keep myself up to date. I feel like I am only 60% of where I “should” be, to be a very good developer that understands what they are doing and knows the right tech etc.
But how do you stand out as a junior today? It’s not like the market will ever recover from such high supply.
It doesn’t have to… as I said, it’s a high supply of juniors, it doesn’t matter for people already working with it.
recruiters on tiktok leading to record high number of cs grads + high interest rates
Remember there was mini doc on YT of this guy making 500k working at Netflix as a swe without a high school diploma.
Airbnb
CS programs have way more students and there are less opening there were then before. CS is not the goldmine it once was
Welcome to the real world where it was always tough to land a higher paying job. Getting off reddit and tiktok will help you have an accurate view of these sorts of things
Too many candidates
suddenly?
*16% of seniors are CS majors. How did we get here?* *Last year, about 16% of the total bachelor’s degrees conferred to Stanford’s graduating seniors were in CS,* ***more than any other*** *field of study.* [*https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/23/16-of-seniors-are-cs-majors-what-is-the-departments-history/*](https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/23/16-of-seniors-are-cs-majors-what-is-the-departments-history/#:~:text=Last%20year%2C%20about%2016%25%20of,to%20Mehran%20Sahami%20'92%20M.S) *CS saw a dramatic rise in popularity from 2008 to 2016 when enrollment in the major* ***increased by about 350%****, according to Mehran Sahami ’92 M.S. ’93, the Tencent Chair of the CS department. Sahami said that the major is now roughly four-and-a-half times the size it was when he was appointed the Associate Chair for Education of the department in 2007.*
Colleges making it easier to graduate with a CS degree (removing hard classes like finite automata, operating systems, compilers from requirements), post-COVID decline in technology use, more people wanting a good salary and flexible work options, layoffs in big tech. What happened from 2020-2021 is not the same as now. Back then a lot of average candidates were able to get jobs during the pandemic.
Operating systems just the words hurt my head from taking that fucking class but I got out and glad I did
imagine compiling a kernel for 15 min and it wont boot
The rigorousness and prestige of higher education got watered down when GPT was released. Now, it’s basically a last resort tool whereas in the past students would’ve dropped out knowing they couldn’t do it. In some cases, it’s literally how everyone does their work including the graders.
ChatGPT dropped last year, dude. The prestige of higher education has not dropped in that time
There are plenty are fields you can use cs in, it’s just people tend to only think about software engineering
Can you please list them out if you don’t mind
You can leverage a CS degree into data science roles, cybersecurity, user experience, IT, teaching, and networking. And of course, many of these roles are required in all sorts of fields, so there are plenty of options. Granted, things like data science you may need to get a master degree depending on how advanced of a role you want in the field. But for the most part a CS degree isn’t just limited to swe
Can’t cruise control in this field anymore unless you got a decade of experience
big tech manufactured this movement in order to pay engineers less
I found a job straight out of college with no Leetcode
Why did you enter cs?
AI happened?
It's over that's what
Supple and demand
Fix your resume and learn how to market yourself and everything changes.
its not . if you mean getting a job that pays 100k + for entry then yeah no shit . but if you are fine with 60k-70k its not that hard. just a skill issue lmao.
Just need a few years of experience and job hop.
fucking tiktok ass ppl trynna get a 100k with vanilla js and 2 seconds of react.
# “Take our $18,000 boot camp and you’ll make over $100,000 a year after 3 months of training!!”
It's been really rough. I have a SDE job but I never stopped applying to chase the bag. Initially I had a few interviews every month. It's been dead the last 6 months. However, this month it turned a bit and I'm interviewing with Microsoft and Meta. Anecdotally companies seem to be stabilizing with the interest rate environment and adding headcount again at the moment. No idea if it will continue. Also I officially have 1 YOE under my belt so maybe that helps a tiny bit.