Graduating engineers who studied computer science in a decent school (not necessarily at Stanford; any school that covered languages and algorithms and made students use those in context of practical problems) will do just fine. They will not have a 7-digit bank account 5 years after graduation, but they can still find good tech jobs that, averaged over several years, pay more than enough for a good quality of life.
On age, as a single data point from someone whose age starts with "5", I have not seen particular difficulties in job hunting. To maintain long-term employability I recommend broadening experience beyond the pure computer science to domains that leverage computers to build new things: medical devices, signal processing, sensors, computational biotech, satellites, audio; whatever looks fun. My 2c.
I have no real career prospects (it feels like just a job now). I'm burnt out and have basically zero marketable skills. Even out of college, I had to apply to about 250 positions. I have a masters from a better school now and it doesn't feel like it made any difference.
"I recommend broadening experience beyond the pure computer science to domains that leverage computers to build new things: medical devices, signal processing, sensors, computational biotech, satellites, audio; whatever looks fun."
I love learning about this stuff. I really love the synergistic aspect of doing what you describe. But at the end of the day, it means nothing. Who cares if you built simple apps, have a personal website, worked on personal audio processing projects, or built some homebrew IoT type stuff? Certainly hasn't meant shit for my career. They want people who have done this in an enterprise setting.
> They want people who have done this in an enterprise setting.
This has been a question I've had too. How do you get to show you have experience in enterprise software/tech if you've not been given the chance to work in a setting that uses something like that before?
It's the chicken and egg problem. Companies are often more concerned with the candidate's experience in specific esoteric technologies for their sector, and will not hire anybody who doesn't fit that yet, instead of also hiring people who can definitely learn that tech pretty quickly based on their experience, or having shown they are experienced learners.
> This has been a question I've had too. How do you get to show you have experience in enterprise software/tech if you've not been given the chance to work in a setting that uses something like that before?
Personally, I believe the answer is right place right time, as disappointing as it may sound. A large amount of people I know working these sort of roles are there because Company X in the domain recruited them from University pipelines where they attended and that seems to be almost exclusively where the companies source “entry level” hires for these domains.
I still think it’s possible to get there from somewhere else, it just requires slightly different skill sets and a lot more work.
There are definitely data points different from mine. And apologies if I am offering advice where none is wanted, but I want to clarify what I meant above.
What I meant by "broadening experience" is not a hobby-level stuff you describe (still very useful on a personal development level) but gaining enough depth in another field to be comparable to an undergraduate with that specialization; or at least with a minor in that area. It is a higher bar, but someone with good CS background can master the equivalent of the 3-5 higher undergrad level classes pretty quickly.
I agree that software companies are not really interested in non-software hobby projects. But non-software tech companies often put a very high value on software as a secondary skill in their non-software hires and are willing to lower the bar for their primary tech competency. My 2c.
Well, that's sort of a catch-22. Either you need a credential (major, minor, certificate), or you need work experience in it. But of course you need that work experience in order to get the job, so it doesn't really make you more employable. Plus, most would tend to lose career velocity as they jump from one domain to the next.
"There are definitely data points different from mine."
That was all I was trying to say. Certainly applies to me as well.
> most would tend to lose career velocity as they jump from one domain to the next
Absolutely. Gaining expertise in another domain would also cost time and effort (and maybe money). So I would not do it first thing after graduation and would only pick an area that I really like, so the extra work does not feel like work. But if one gets to senior levels and does not want to go into management, having additional area of expertise opens a lot of doors.
> Either you need a credential (major, minor, certificate), or you need work experience in it.
This has not been my experience. IME the bar to cross is knowledge, being able to pass the equivalent of a code screen or a technical interview; few companies outside of highly regulated markets care about a piece of paper to substantiate skills. As always, just my 2c; YMMV.
Linus did something that was definitely not hobby-level stuff at an obscure university in Finland with, on-paper, less prospects and at a probably younger age then you.
It would be less impressive if Linus did the same at age 27 after a Master's at a top tier US school, but likely still enough to get a nice FAANG job with solid promotion prospects.
That's likely what the parent meant, you need to show, something, in the 99th percentile among your peer cohort.
Are you really suggesting that new developers should simply contribute a Linux tier contribution to open source to be considered for entry level developer roles?
> It would be less impressive if Linus did the same at age 27 after a Master's at a top tier US school, but likely still enough to get a nice FAANG job with solid promotion prospects
I'm not sure how you missed 1/3 of my comment.
Clearly with such conditions it will not be an entry level job. Nor am I saying it's absolutely necessary. From what I understand a 99th percentile score on Leetcode will alone get you through the door.
Though a nice job (~40 hour weeks, good team, above average comp. package) with solid promotion prospects is about the maximum even a somewhat less impressive version of Linus could expect at 27-28.
what has worked for me is picking a career theme. Working at companies that thematically align. You build up a host of knowledge that is not computer related but instead is domain related and this offers value too.
This. The reality here is that CS combined with other areas will open a whole world and keep you employable for the time being (at least before any big corp comes with chatgpt 7, hehe).
No. That just isn't true. Only 8% of students end up with jobs 10 years after. There's an IEE Report on this specific issue. It's much worse for minorities where job placement is nearly guaranteed to not occur. It's across almost all universities.
The article you linked is about ALL STEM majors taken combined. Computer Science degrees have a much much better placement.
Also the above commenter mentioned that it needs to be a “real” comp sci degree, not one that calls itself comp sci but never makes you learn classes like Data structures, algorithms, etc. There are “fake” CS degrees out there, and big employers know they are no good.
My university CS department has a 100% placement every. single. year. Including the last 3 years, and it’s like not even a top 100 school in the US.
No school has 100% job placement. That's literally impossible. I went to a top 20 school and job placement was barely 50% but claimed it had 95%. The only reason I knew they were lying is because the one of the professors I researched under told me the statistics were falsified to make the program look good.
For CS grads, it’s got to be close. I’m sure it’s not exactly 100%, every year, forever, but I’m well involved in the program and can’t think of a single student since I graduated that didn’t land a job out of college, and the program advertises it as 95%.
No one from there goes to FAANG, it’s not a prestigious enough school for that. But there is an endless demand in large companies like government contractors, banks, the small web dev shops, etc. that need programmers for 60k$ out of school.
This is a bias, the people you interacted with that shared their results and told you that they found a job reinforce your believe in the rate. But the reality is that often, the ones not finding opportunities do not talk about not finding opportunities.
The professors I knew openly told me and our classes how the system worked. And that the majority of individuals will not find a job. There are too many new graduates to new positions. Many of them were fellows and board members of the ACM. I was active in the student group and got to know these people and the outcomes. These guys often share results and data they collect privately with other researchers. And people are failing at an alarming scale. But you won't find those people on this site, and you wouldn't because of the main demographic of this forum.
It’s possible your story is true for bigger schools, im not sure on that. My school graduates 5-10 people per year, and I add all of them on LinkedIn, every year. So I feel I have a good handle on how many are getting jobs.
School advertised job placement percentages do not care whether or not you got a job in your studied field. That's how they lie about such high percentages. As long as you entered the workforce, it's a success.
That doesn't seem right. I went to a state school. I think CS grads had a marketed 90ish% placement rate. Talking to others in my classes right before graduation it seems we had at least 80% of people with jobs lined up prior to graduation.
It's not. It's often due to under reporting. And sometimes the blatant falsification of data. But you don't really need to do that when only a small percentage of individuals reply to your survey. And thats how you get a high placement rate. You also need to understand that for the hundreds of thousands of CS, IT degrees that are awarded each year only a few thousand jobs exist at the entry level. You see reports of hundreds of thousands of job postings but the vast majority are just repeats of the same listing.
Don't listen to him any program claining 100% retention or anything around it is falsifying their claims. Working at walmart or target can qualify as that. Often, the only people that report on this are the ones that find jobs which is a small minority. It's essentially meaningless.
Come on, that link is from 11 years ago. It says only 8% end up with jobs 10 years later in their field of study. There is no evidence presented as to the actual causation.
This is a particularly funny quote given the times we live in now: “A third is that there are not a lot of exciting new aerospace or defense initiatives that spur the imagination of young engineers like there once were.”
How is that funny? Compared to previous times it seems there aren't that many groundbreaking programs, from what we can see. Most of aviation innovation is suppressed by market demands - we want tried and true, low-risk designs. This is in stark contrast to the 50s-80s.
Space is a fairly small market, but has some stuff going on. Nothing on the scale of the space race era. Even in the 90s they were talking about how space launches would become so routine. Then, if you launched a mission it was likely 70% new tech, procedures, or experiments. Now all the missions build off of previous ones. Hey, look a new space telescope! Been there, done that, barely makes the news.
Defense is a wildcard since the interesting stuff is classified. There are some interesting problems in the DARPA competitions. Not a lot of freedom in those jobs - lots of politics usually.
Seriously? I'm going to guess that it's highly unlikely that you have worked on the Hubble(or the Webb), so for you to say 'been there, done that' just show how de-sensitized you are to actual achievements.
Space race budgets were only really significantly elevated from 62-69, and fell off pretty precipitously after that, so to attribute all of that spending to 3 decades is wrong as well.
Aviation innovation is not suppressed by market demands, it is because the private market can now participate that innovation is happening again. But you don't seem to get that aviation and rocket innovation is indeed rocket science, and 'low risk designs' aren't just established over night.
"so for you to say 'been there, done that' just show how de-sensitized you are to actual achievements."
No shit, that's the entire point - society doesn't care anymore because it isn't shiny. Take a survey on the street of space telescopes and most won't even be aware of the Jame Webb.
"so to attribute all of that spending to 3 decades is wrong as well."
Much of those subsequent decades built off of the information and ideas generated in that time period. They still had regular manned missions and large innovations like the space shuttle. No more manned launches from NASA. No more prestige.
"But you don't seem to get that aviation and rocket innovation is indeed rocket science, "
I do get that. Now please go compare the rate of innovation and newly adopted designs today versus decades ago. Today it's all about tweaking some existing model for slightly more efficiency and running computer models.
Wow, I made it to the 8% mark. I'm burnt out, so I doubt I'll be in it much longer.
"One area where STEM students are needed is in aerospace and especially the defense industry."
One issue they didn't mention about this is the shitty work environment for many of the jobs. The people I talk to who are leaving the defense industry can't stand the politics and procedures anymore.
From someone who intimately knows UC Berkeley's Computer Science undergraduate program for the entire past decade, this can only be a good thing. Lots of Berkeley smarts have gone to waste by doing nothing in FAANG and chasing the coveted golden handcuffs. Not every case obviously (not sure why this needs to be said), but a vast majority of undergraduates just expect to be handed top compensation for knowing jack shit apart from knowing how to study for an interview, and I always found that odd.
Now they might actually need to prove their value in ways that make sense or at least aligns more closely to baseline reasonable.
I'm not saying this out of spite due to being rejected either—I played the same game and came out with top internships and placements at the same set of Big Tech that everyone else wanted. I feel awful about being compelled to participate in that meat grinder.
My guess is the allure of FAANG is the same as that of Ivy Leagues - people who haven't gone to either think there's something special about those institutions or the people who went there. Part of it is certainly media coverage and status in their peer group and general society as well.
But once you've gone to one of those, you realize that they are really no different from any other college or work experience. There are some things they do a lot better due to scale and ranking, but day-to-day is much the same.
I worked at a FAANG as a new grad because I thought it was the logical next step in the career of a software developer (money). I really don't understand the appeal. Was it once actually worth it? Even with the money and "prestige" it felt like a huge step back career-wise.
It was obvious once I got there that the sheer scale meant that more energy had to go into menial tasks than into actual creative work. It seemed like a trap where people who had gotten a Masters or PhD in something actually hard ended up working on things that wouldn't even be challenging to someone with a Bachelors.
As for the "culture", well, you're surrounded by people who have been grinding to get up the ladder. I think my FAANG coworkers were the least interesting people I have worked with. I don't mean that to be rude I think it's just selection bias (I consider myself to be boring). Conversely, the people in the boring industries like Government and Aerospace have been some of the most interesting people. They're also tackling much more intellectually stimulating problems than most people are going to at FAANG, without advanced degrees.
It felt like a misallocation of human potential. I think the contraction of FAANG and "big tech" in general is probably better for the progress of technology and also maybe the personal growth of developers, or at least it is for me. Or not, maybe I am just biased. My $0.02
A lot of the “so what?” comments are missing the point. For years, putting in the effort to get into top CS universities and then putting in the effort to graduate with good marks and an internship or two was understood as the path to a high paying CS career. Many of these students have put in incredible effort to get to this point with the expectation that they’ll have a good chance of landing a FAANG job from which to launch their career.
Now that they’ve arrived at graduation, the opportunities available to their older peers for the past decade are suddenly unavailable. Many of those students have spent the last 4-8 years of their lives focused on this goal, only to see the nature of the game change completely right before the finish line.
Those of us who have been around for a while know that this is only temporary and that a great CS education still opens doors to many good companies. However, it’s a shock to the system to be focused on a goal (and a specific paycheck) for years and then to discover it’s not available to you right at the end. Try to have some empathy for this turn of events.
I mentor in a program for college students and grads. A disproportionate number of our rather talented students are struggling to get any interviews at all, despite our resume reviews and coaching. They’ve gone from hoping to get a FAANG job to hoping they can get any interviews at all. It’s tough out there.
Yes I would love to be empathetic, but I also can't also help feel some amount of bitter sweetness because I've seen some HORRIFIC behavior resulting from the way the major has been gamed and milked as students from top universities saturated the game with min-maxing (moreso at Berkeley than Stanford just because of population and economics involved). Yes I know this existed before and this is nothing new, and arguably as a microcosm it accurately reflects the industry experience itself.
But gosh darn it, this is computer science we're talking about, in college no less! Where hath the passion gone?! I apologize for the soapbox.
I have a feeling the average student who studies hard isn't going to have a tough time getting any job after graduation. Not everyone needs to be a 200k+ FAANG SE right out of college.
Those who can't get any interviews, what are their grades like? Do they have open source contributions, a website, online presence? Internships?
What if you are that kind of person who only studies to get into a position of wealth and power? You can never go back to the day you foolishly picked CS over law school!
Crikey - Law is even more fraught with risk on there being a positive outcome (Weirdly, there's an excess of Lawyers and Accountants in most jurisdictions, and a hang of a lot of graduates end up on minimum wage, if they get to practice at all)
The thing about CS, and ENG in general, is that it's less about who you know and more about what you know, which is a real leveller.
Right now, though, there's a pull back from the FAANGs and other big tech, which IMO is a measure of the cost of/appetite for risk at the moment (read: interest rates) as well as a well publicised miss or two (Twitter, Facebook's Metaverse).
Is it all over for Big Tech? Really hard to say, dot com bubble didn't end it. Outsourcing never eventuated (despite what recruiters are saying about remote workers having to reduce their salary expectations, because of the competition from overseas, the truth is that companies that take their ENG over seas end up paying twice as much to clean it back up when they eventually have to bring it back in house)
> You can never go back to the day you foolishly picked CS over law school!
You can do CS and then do law school, what you can’t undo is the time you invested into building a legal career rather than a software development career after school, or vice versa. (OTOH, there’s also ways you could leverage either start into an advantage in the other career, because both are fields that reward knowledge of the application domain as well as the career field, and both are fields where the other is a legitimate application domain, so its not a total loss.)
Same. It's annoying these websites think they are so special and magical they have the audacity to require us to login or even to pay to access words on the screen. Words are no longer valuable. They are lucky to even get any clicks at all.
If they're no longer valuable, why is it annoying and audacious that these websites are asking for payment? Is it an insult to make such a presumption from the viewpoint of the authors?
If words are worthless now, I imagine that reading my comment is equally worthless as reading the article, so therefore it should be no skin off your back/not anything to be annoyed by.
Honestly, while some bureaucracy is inevitable, how oppressive it is can vary a lot. The last large multinational corp I worked for had a fairly horrific amount of it. The one I work for now (roughly the same size) has a tolerable amount of it.
That makes sense. One of the jobs of team leaders and middle managers is to shield the team from as much BS as possible. Some people will be better, and some worse, at doing that.
I think most companies as they grow will have people who are about to be redundant and then create layers of paperwork that need to be filled solely to justify their raison d'être.
I suppose that I shouldn't have said "literally" there. If a FAANG company were to offer me a million dollars for a day's work, and I only had to work for a single day, I'd be in.
But I know my own temperament, and enough people who work at various FAANGS, to know that if I had to work there for more than a couple of months, I would be utterly miserable regardless of the pay rate. I have worked at large international tech companies, and that's been fine, though.
Well, sure, if the choice is between two miserable jobs, I'd take the better paying one. But I'd only do it temporarily while looking for a better job even if in another line of work entirely.
> But none of the faang firms was here this time. Neither were Spotify, Salesforce, Uber or Microsoft. In any case most of those companies and almost 50 others – “all the famous ones” – had already rejected her internship applications a few months earlier.
One could consider other giants (Microsoft, Salesforce) and public unicorns (Uber, Spotify) as part of FAANG ("Big Tech"), not just the five companies in the literal acronym.
Unless you're suggesting that all of the tech companies smaller than that tech Fortune 500/NASDAQ tier (again, really need a phrase and maybe listing of such firms) might come to prominence?
Just fantasizing about the end of the era in which software companies feel they have to dominate a captive global user base with their one web application.
It sounds like wishful thinking with slight pandering to HN crowd. Is it really easier now compared to before? There are exponentially more incumbents than before.
Consulting is always a way to go? Having a track record of success over a long period of time makes it easier for businesses to hire you. To be fair, around the 45 ish age, I would expect most folks to have evolved to a senior+ where it should be more about architecting systems and figuring out how to solve business problems then just executing on code.
I saw plenty of those folks 50+ at FANG-ish companies whilst working in the Bay but ofc that's just an anecdote.
I'm heading toward that trail, put my time in at FAANG and it's time to move on.
Any tips on how to get started?
I'm as unclear on how to build a serious consulting shop, as I was when I was 22, a waiter with some self-taught iPhone OS experience. Which I guess makes sense, I wasn't building business relationships from deep within a FAANG org chart as a SWE.
>We just witnessed both in less than a couple years.
If by "witnessed both" you mean "the tail end of the first period that had lasted for 3+ decades, and the beginning of the second which, who knows how long it will last", then yes.
But this kind of "both" is hardly reassuring for witnessing another round of good times anytime soon.
Three recessions happened in that three decade period you’re talking about where new economies were born and mass tech layoffs happened. Also nobody can predict the future, but it doesn’t change the point that prosperous periods will return.
"Three recessions happened in that three decade period" three recessions that barely affected coding jobs and coding job demand, so there's that. The impact of layoffs at those cases lasted hardly a year or so. Developers found jobs very soon after the dot-com boom or 2008 just fine.
Because I see a bigger recession as the world changes and the US doesn't have as much a hold on the top spot, plus there's AI that will impact a lot of tech jobs, and basically the most numerous ones (which are not FAANG or star developers, but corporate coding drones that could be changed to 1/5th the manpower + AI in a 5-10 years).
As computer scientist, I have no issue finding a job. I can work in automation field, as teacher (elementary school, high school), as security engineer, infrastructure, devops, banking, accounting, etc.. I'm sure, maybe some point of time I won't be writing code as I do today, but without job, no way
Worse are those that just finished a "full dev stack bootcamp" and now are trying to find a job as software developers.
1) The dotcom crash (and to a lesser extent 2008) showed us how transient these jobs are
2) You're going to age out at about 45ish unless you can secure a less common role at a less common company that values tenured folks. You're paid well partially as an advance on your unemployability later. One option is to move into management before such a time, or on to wood working or another profession.
These are never explicitly said, but if you're observant you'll realize it's the case.
Maybe it's different in America but that just hasn't been my experience in the UK. Loads of people over 50 still working in tech. Obviously most in management but that's to be expected. There are plenty still doing "actual work". I'm not really worried about ageism.
Of course you have to keep learning. Nobody is going to hire a 60 year old who only knows Pascal or whatever (sorry Pascal programmers).
Yes, exactly. I just turned 66, and have a technical lead role at an autonomous vehicle company. The technologies and languages that I use on a daily basis did not exist when I was an undergrad. Keeping up is essential if you want to remain technical. (I have done 3 or 4 stints as a manager, but always managed to reach escape velocity. The worst day on the bench is better than the best day driving a spreadsheet.) Why am I often the one trying to sell the 20-somethings on trying out the latest language features? Not all luddites are 40+.
I think it is more a question of whether the company actually understands technology. Lots of companies, particularly in the UK, have ended up in the tech business so they are always one step from outsourcing everything to India (or elsewhere, India is getting expensive now).
In that environment, it is very hard to understand what an older person brings to the table beyond costing more.
The stuff about "you have to keep learning" is also something you hear a lot in the UK. Yes mate, I know React but haven't used styled-components...your company uses it, but there is no way I will be able to learn it. When you are in a job, you are continually learning and no company fires everyone when they move a system to a new language or whatever. Part of the reason why the UK has a "skills shortage" is because, as explained above, most companies have no idea what they are hiring for. Oh, you last worked on Java 8...sorry, you will never be able to catch up to Java 1X.
This is part of the ageism situation because younger people view older people as unable to learn in almost every context. But the reality is that many companies are unwilling to learn about the things people can do if you give them an opportunity.
Some companies aren't like this but the small size of the startup market/the use of the UK as an outsourcing hub/the dominance of large non-tech companies in tech hiring means that this is the case in most of the UK.
Well, a smart engineer would look at their income adjusted according to their CoL. Those amazing-sounding salaries in SV are offset by how expensive everything is.
If I can live with a higher standard of living at half the nominal salary, am I really making less?
Well, it depends on what you value. If you consider being in a specific area critical for your standard of living, then the computation changes accordingly, of course.
But not everyone considers living there to have a positive impact on their standard of living. They live there to get a high-paying job. Of the dozen or so people I personally know who live in that area, half of them would prefer to live somewhere else.
I'm 60 in a few days. I slid into Verilog (now SystemVerilog) about 12 years ago, mostly on FPGAs. These days I've got more work than I know what to do with. I'm planning on retiring in December.
There's something to be said for a less common role, even if it does give me a splitting headache every now and then.
Its really rare to get a Verilog related job with stock options/good pay though. You can do an infinite amount of it making terrible money working in defense; doubly so if you want to live somewhere awful.
When you say move into management, is that something that an individual can really control? I'm an IC and I've performed well but I've never thought of management as something I could actually go into. Instead, I've always seen management as something a company decides to open the door for.
It can be fairly trivial to hide your age and if you’re doing remote work using filters will make you look deceptively young. By the time the company ever finds out your actual age it’s too late. You should also avoid revealing your age to coworkers or other clues that may hint your age.
Now I’m imagining a whole company full of 40 year olds unsuccessfully impersonating 20 year olds, but nobody can tell because we’re all using the same outdated slang.
“You really yeeted that code review,” the term leader says, a slight waver in his voice as he wonders if this will be the one that gets him caught.
“Yes it was yolo,” nods the coder.
They quickly break up the meeting, happy to have survived the interaction.
You don’t need to reveal 20 years of experience. You could talk about how many years of experience will satisfy them. If they ask for 5 years of experience with some tech stack talk about stuff you did with it 7 years ago and onward. Be vague.
A person of less experience will get the job and be paid the same as you anyway.
Aging out is one of those myths that sound true until you think about them. The number of developers doubles every 7 years or so. Which means there are twice as many 20 year olds as 30, 30 as 40 and 40 as 50. So if you're at the average shop then for every 50 year old you see there should be 8 20 year olds. Which is pretty close to what you get.
And that's before we even start talking about the fact that js was just invented when the average 50 year old was entering the workforce.
If you start at 22-ish, I thought the risk of aging out started around 30-ish? Older people have external lives, cost more in salary, cost more in health care, ... They also have been known to push back re: overwork and to not get swept up in current fads.
Speaking as someone whose age starts with a 5, I don't expect/agree older people should earn more based on being older. If they earn more by bringing more value to the company, that's welcome and fair on both sides, but if you're 53 and you don't bring more value in than someone who is 35, you shouldn't expect to take more home either.
As a fiftysomething, I agree entirely. As near as I can see, very few people get paid more based on simple longevity. They get paid more because their increased experienced and larger skillset provides more value to the company.
I agree, with the caveat that many employers don’t see it that way. They will think you are too expensive for the value you can provide, without even giving you an offer. It is just expected that the 53 year old has more ability than the 35 year old, making it hard for career changers or late bloomers.
This is an example of ageism. I'm pushing 50, let's see how I stack up:
> cost more in salary
If the salaries that show up in HN posts are true, this is a no.
> cost more in health care
My only health care needs in the past 30 years have been a couple of dental cleanings per year.
> have been known to push back [...] and to not get swept up in current fads.
Ok, you've got me on this one. I do keep up with new languages, libraries, etc. I've also lived through enough hype cycles to separate the good stuff from the fluff.
If you're an experienced professional competing for the same jobs as fresh graduates, something has gone awfully wrong with your career. At some point you gotta start bringing more to the table than pure grind.
perhaps the gradual ageism begins at 30, but look around and try to see how many >40yr engineers are around you. Every year there is a dice roll to remove folks, and an extremely low intake of new "older" folks. (ie, 5% of 40yr old engineers might leave per year, and only 1% of 40yr old engineers are entering as their first year due to starting a new career)
Typically the older you get, and the more knowledgable you become, you step into different positions that tend to pay more (PM, Leadership). The more experienced individuals are just more beneficial in those roles, rather than strictly coding.
Having to work with toxic people or completely give up an interpersonal leadership role as a condition of being a staff engineer is another.
I'm in a weird spot career wise because I turned down 3 management roles to oversee multiple teams and now have to signal my non-interest in stepping out of team leadership and into a staff engineering role.
I just really like managing ICs in the day to day and everything that would make me good at those other roles is incidental to me liking managing ICs.
I think people understand this in general, it but they are understandably worried and upset because those jobs put food on the table and roofs over our heads. And in the current economy we’re pretty heavily incentivized to over-specialize, so your job vanishing is a pretty big problem.
It's as if there were never ups and downs in tech before 2022. As someone who was working in the dotcom era (and before), I've seen so many booms/busts/layoffs and gluts/shortages that I've lost count.
TL;DR: This is nothing new. At all. And it's certainly not limited to the 'tech' industry.
I been really fascinated watching people who have never been through the full cycle before coming to terms with the reality that there are cycles to these things.
I have a great amount of sympathy for them, really. It has to be a huge shock. But on the other hand, did everyone think that the world had stopped working in the way it always has?
Is this what MANGA stands for? I saw it before in the context of FAANG/MANGA companies but never realized it's just because Facebook is now Meta.
I tried Bing Search which told me it might mean Microsoft, Alibaba, Nvidia, Google and Amazon for "some of the leading companies in cloud computing and artifical intelligence." But the "source" it gave me was the Wikipedia article for Japanese comics.
There's so little information about the roles that I'd never personally bother applying. I don't want to go through the process of writing a cover letter when I don't even know what languages you work in or what skillsets you're looking for.
agreed. it is a weird situation no? They have a right to charge people to read their articles. We have a right to find a way to read it for free? Always confuses me but I will always downvote non paywalled articles.
