What SWE job hunting is like right now
It used to take two-weeks max to find a new position. It's now been two months, and I have no leads. I will call out the exact situation I've run into.
I have received nearly 20 calls from a dozen different recruiting firms all for the same two back-fill jobs at Charter in St. Louis. I interviewed with them once, and it's not a match. .NET, Knockout, and TSQL... They weren't interested in me either. I'm not exactly offended by that.
I get two calls a day about Charter at this point. I've been told, "they just finished a round of interviews, and didn't find anyone." At this point, I have to ask straight away to anyone that calls me about a position, "Is this for Charter?" It's always yes, and I always say, I've already interviewed and I'm not interested.
One of these firms told me they don't want to work with Charter anymore because they've basically gone through everyone, and still haven't hired for these two back-fill positions they've been interviewing for. And they seem to be the only company in the city that's hiring. Or pretending to hire, because they've been giving everyone the runaround for months. I asked to add a note for me in their system that I don't want anymore calls for Charter. They added it and told me they have a shared system with a few other organizations.
That same firm told me they are focusing more on remote positions instead of St. Louis. Which is the least safe city in the country, which includes financial security.
I've always struggled with St. Louis overall. Enterprise is ancient here. When I'm told, "But we have Boeing, Centene, and Bayer!" I have to groan a bit. I'm not talking about tech stack, it's all old as far as I'm concerned, I'm talking about mentality. Nobody tests, CI automation is unheard of. And everyone rolls their eyes at the web. These companies want to build web applications, but they don't want to use the tools of the trade, they want to use desktop tools and pretend browsers don't exist. It's like building a skyscraper with nothing but wood planks and screw driver. I won't get into that at the risk of a much longer rant.
This place feels like a barren wasteland. But I know people in other areas are struggling to find work too. I'm open to move at this point, but I haven't decided which market to focus on. Is there anywhere that's actually growing right now?
118 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 175 ms ] threadThis seems like a very dangerous attitude from a plane maker, a drug maker, and a healthcare data provider.
After a few months, I told him and the CTO that they shouldn’t be staffing up a technical team of software developers. It wouldn’t give them an advantage. We transitioned two of the long time Powerbuilder developers who maintained a 20 year old in house EMR to writing reports and overseeing vendors.
We outsourced everything and used COTS and hired contractors when needed.
After that was complete over two years. I walked in and told the director, “you don’t need me anymore you just don’t admit it and are trying to keep me busy”. I had purposefully put myself out of job.
But I had a hell of a story to tell in STAR format when asked at my n-1 job various “tell me about a time when…” interview questions.
In fact, the major health org I am working with second-hand (customer of the company I work for) has a hard code freeze mid-November. The remaining 6 weeks of the year prior to Jan 1 is nothing but QA, then QA'ing bug fixes, rinse and repeat.
It is very un-agile, and it isn't likely to change. The closest they will ever get is back to true waterfall, which is planned iterations.
I’ve had a similar experience, albeit with different details.
in the same boat
John Deere is the same here. They directly posted 2 IT Admin jobs. I applied and was denied. Now I get spammed with phone calls, emails, and texts many times a week from recruiters who insist I'm ideal for the position but never get beyond the recruiter. It's been months at this point.
US Army, via one of their contractors, is the same. Open rolls didn't fill. Now the contractor seems to have these rolls perpetually open and staffing agencies hiring constantly resulting in...nothing.
Truly bizarre and frustrating.
You’re looking at this wrong. Enterprise tools of the trade are not the same as start up tools of the trade.
You’re not going to get in to an enterprise order management codebase and be pitching nodejs and huge lift and shifts. It just won’t happen.
Real world example: I recently interviewed an engineer hit by layoffs at Shopify/UPS. The candidate had 4 years of total work experience, and was making $175k in the role that she was let go from, and they won’t accept anything less when looking for a new role. With 4 years of total experience in the workforce.
I would have loved to hire them at $120-140k, but for $175k I can easily find people with 5x more years of experience.
It’s a tough pill to swallow but it is possible to get offers, but they might not be at the salary levels from 2-3 years ago.
Edit: Above anecdote is for 100% remote in US. Full stack node/react/mongo.
Edit 2: Another anecdote to share. The recruiter our company works with (who sources all our candidates) used to only work on a 25% commission of first year salary. About a year ago we were able to negotiate that down to 20%. And a couple months ago we negotiated it down to $90/hr with 0% commission (which comes to roughly 10% or less of first year salary on average). The market for engaging recruiters is a good proxy for the overall supply/demand of the job market.
All I can say is there are a lot of people with 10-15 yrs experience who will happily accept $140-150k with 10+ yrs experience in the US remote market (more specifically full stack node/react)
It is noteworthy that you did not provide any.
Adding to the anecdotes: Plenty of people in my company with 5+ years of experience make less than $150K.
You don’t even have to do that. Go to levels.fyi and look at the compensation for places like Delta, Walmart or one of the insurance companies
You're attitude reflects part of the problem. There are a bunch of still relatively new people or especially boot camp grads that were sold on the always unrealistic expectation of making $150k right out of the gate. That was always a bubble that wasn't sustainable, but now a bunch of tech workers feel entitled to it rather than being willing to adjust to reality and be grateful for the fact that most of us can make over $100k relatively quickly. Compared to most other jobs in the US tech is still one of the best places to get into, I have a friend who has her master's degree and has been teaching for close to 15 years who is estatic about recently getting a raise to $75k. I have another friend that works as a project and procurement manager in the construction field and after 4 years and with a degree he was still making < $80k.
When all that is considered some new "full stack developer" (which really means "I can do JS so I can do full stack if you're backend is mongo your app server is Node and your fronted is React, no I can't do jQuery that was never covered in our 2 weeks on frontend") acting insulted at $140k sounds spoiled, whiney and entitled.
Also, 150k for 10 years is great if you're working in government or somewhere local in the midwest, you're still living like a king and probably super stable.
What I don't love about the OP is the crab bucket mentality, not that they don't make enough money themselves.
OP is of course free to live whatever life they think is best — and I wish them all the success at it.
Calling other people “whiny” because you choose to live a life where you’re underpaid (as you put it, “crab bucket mentality”) is unhealthy and what I should have focused my criticism on.
There is not just one “tech” industry that hire software engineers.
FAANG employees like to tell themselves that their salaries are/were well deserved and not merely the result of a bubble, but a lot of them are finding out the hard way that that isn't the case.
First, salaries are still local, so 140k may be an "insult" in some places, but not in others.
But more importantly, this is the market at work. If the recruiter can get talent for what she's willing to pay, more power to her. If the ex-shopify person can get a comparable job for 175k, more power to them.
But there is an adjustment to be had. The free money spigot has dried up for many companies, and so the salaries of the past 5ish years are in for a reckoning.
So I think there's value in reflecting why some job offer felt insulting. It may help the person recognize some thoughts or worries that were lurking in his mind.
On a less touchy-feely level, getting an "insulting" job offer can be a useful data point regarding the state of the job market, and/or that particular employer.
Wow…I think you have that mixed up. You have a very inflated view of the value you add at only 4 years of experience. I am nearing 4 decades in tech and I can count on one hand the number of devs (out of hundreds) have met in my career that when they were at 4 years of experience brought enough value to justify a $140k salary in 2023 dollars.
And it’s not a lottery ticket. Have you seen the stats of developer/revenue for Google, Microsoft and Facebook?
It’s a lot lower for Amazon because of the warehouse workers, drivers etc and Apple because of Apple retail
Those are incompatible in my experience.
This goes both ways. People teams will prefer to pay less than they have before, and engineers should usually ask for more than they currently make.
Anecdotally as a hiring manager, I would always encourage folks to have savings to cover the time it takes to avoid settling for lower salaries if they lose their role. The folks not making that much already should be moving up to those “lower paying” positions.
While I wouldn’t have taken just any bullshit low paying full time job after getting Amazoned (full time in the cloud consulting division), I was more than willing to take a contract job and just to keep interviewing while I’m working - especially now that jobs and interviews are remote.
Contracting between full time positions can certainly replace the need for savings, if that ties into what you were arguing for.
Say I’m looking for a job paying $200K and it takes me 3 months to find it. Now just to make $200K over the year, I need to have a job paying $266K.
Why hold out for the job, go through savings, and then when I finally get the job need to replenish my savings instead of just sucking up my pride taking a lower paying job and keep looking?
In my case, when I got Amazoned with a more than $40K severance package. My goal was to have some money coming in before I had to touch it.
I was willing to accept any old enterprise dev remote contract to keep the money flowing. I said in a previous reply that I did spam jobs left and right as a backup plan.
I ended up getting two offers with the type of job I wanted and my desired compensation target before even my 10 days of paid PTO (on top of the severance) was depleted. But that was dumb luck and having contributed to a few official open source “AWS solutions”
Was it dumb luck, though? Your situation reminds me of the concept of "luck surface area." You contributed to "a few" open source AWS solutions. You've said in the past that you network well, so I imagine you have lots of other little things you do that get your name out there.
This is something I've been horribly negligent of this far in my career. I thought it would be enough just to do good work and that I would be recognized for that work via osmosis or something.
I knew the reputation of Amazon before I started working there and did start laying the groundwork from day one for my next job.
It’s just part of what I do to always be prepared to look for another jobs
Laid off people do get paid unemployment benefits, and they also get the non-monetary benefit of not working. I don’t really consider that lost money to be 1:1 in value when considering you aren’t beholden to a work schedule.
If you have a working partner I would say it’s a no brainer to take your time. Jump on their healthcare and chill.
Oh yeah, if you have kids, you can put childcare costs on hold so you aren’t really losing 100% of your salary when you’re put out of work.
To put that in context, the day I found out I was being Amazoned and a week before my last day, I reached out to a former CTO that couldn’t afford to hire me. But he did need some work/troubleshooting done in my area of specialty and I billed at $135 an hour and that was cheap. Trust me, I know how much AWS ProServe charges for consulting.
Even run of the mill enterprise dev staff augmentation W2 contracts pay $70/hour.
I have no idea if they're real positions, or if / when / by whom they'll get filled.
I was a bit floored. I know IBM isn’t FAANG, but I was expecting them to be making a lot more based on their resume and working at a big co.
Where are you easily finding someone with 20 years experience for 175k?
This actually matches my recent job-search experience.
More specifically: The number of job postings advertising > $200k seems way down from a few years ago. (At least for U.S. remote who's not an expert in distributed systems development.)
Especially after the recent mass layoffs from Google, Meta, etc., there are a lot of very senior devs competing for those sub-$200k positions.
“20 years of experience” is meaningless. The difference in 7-8 years and 20 is meaningless. This is coming from someone who has 25+ years
Look at salaries for well known non tech companies like Delta, Coke, Home Depot, or UPS. I know those off the top of my head because they have a heavy presence in my former hometown (Atlanta). Also look at insurance companies.
Please tell me all of these fields where you can on average make more with just a four year degree.
Let me put it this way. I had a friend who worked in Finance at Amazon and his $1.2 million dollar 2400 square foot home that was 20 years old was relatively shitty compared to the $350K home I had built in the burbs of Atlanta in 2016 that was 1000 square feet larger than his.
Yes I know about Seattle salaries - I turned down a chance to interview for a role at Amazon Retail as an SDE because there was no way in hell I was going to relocate to Seattle and deal with the high prices and shitty weather.
However, I did get a remote role working (full time) at AWS ProServe.
BTW, I had my 3200 square foot house built in the “good school system” in 2016 making $135K.
People making $150K (which puts you in the top 20% of earners) are not going around homeless
Low skilled / low talent in many cases and lower competence but in a ZIRP environment I saw so many situations where women and minorities were hired and given leadership roles, with massively streamlined hiring processes.
When the bottom line doesn’t matter these kinds of hires really proliferated.
I wonder if we will see a hard reset back to competence as the most in demand quality.
And yes I am assuming she is a DEI hire, $180K for four years of experience unless she was like a backend or ai engineer is crazy.
Until about 1 year ago, I think many companies were paying new-ish software developers well north of $150k. Especially VC-funded companies.
Please don't assume anyone is hired for diversity reasons. That's really awful.
That was then. This is now. Salaries fluctuate, both up AND down. Just ask anybody who was around in 2001 or 2008.
I think it was due to the person being hired by a hyper growth VC backed startup which was acquired by UPS/Shopify (who then went on a cost cutting campaign post-acquisition)
I make 106k in CT in a position focused 75% with Java/Spring for modbus/motion control. (Industrial automation) My other 25% is in what I could label “big data” but is really ETL for a crap ton of near real time transactions.
I enjoy it. I would love to make more money; 106 is hard with a family and such.
But when I look and align my skills, history, and ability to speak in front of anyone - I see listings for 150k+ - and I totally don’t feel “worth” that at all.
Not just because I’m self taught, or have a history doing almost all “it roles”, it’s because I’ve spent 90% of my time in the gloriously underpaid healthcare sector. (Still there.)
What is it like making an offer to someone for 150k for a fully remote position? I could never imagine.
Lots of said friends were affected by layoffs at various tech companies over the last couple years, but I also have some junior dev friends that are finding it basically impossible to even get callbacks. Everyone seems to only want senior devs at the moment.
1. Yes, there is an industry-wide downturn in tech. There was just massive over-hiring during the pandemic, and then a huge number of layoffs, which means there are tons of people on the market. Many people have been reporting a strong shift in mentality, lead times, etc. in the tech job market.
2. There is, however, still a lot of demand for tech workers, even if still less than the ZIRP years. Many companies and institutions simply couldn't compete with high paying FAANGs and startups for tech talent, but their need to tech work didn't go away. So in places like government, consumer-focused companies, non-profits, etc. are still hiring. Salaries are often considerably lower than pure tech companies.
3. Despite the huge number of remote jobs, location still matters, primarily because relationships still matter, and those are easier to build face-to-face. This is not unique to tech. If you want to make it big in the fashion industry, there are maybe 4 -ish cities worldwide where you should live. Movie-making, pretty obvious. So while tech is just an overall much, much larger industry, it's not surprising you're disillusioned by St. Louis.
You say that you're a contractor. What does this mean exactly? I.e. are you a contractor by choice, or would you prefer a full time job? How do you normally find jobs (is there a recruiter you usually work with, do you do your own searching, get jobs from past contacts, etc.)? The answer to these questions is important when it comes to optimizing your job search.
Also drop the CI/tests attitude. Many modern startups don’t bother with security-theater either.
But I worked with a recruiter for a few of those months and they got me to a few final rounds. I think having a proper recruiter, who knows the hiring manager, is pretty powerful. Them shaving whatever % of the top is lame but it's better than being unemployed.
My opinion is we are at a severe dislocation period.
I have noticed massive changes in the emerging skills, tools and platforms. Pretty much no code, low code and AI.
Everything else looks useless or outdated.
Meanwhile, tons of startups and big tech companies are dying and laying off.
The skills those people have are dramatically out of whack with what the market actually wants.
They are also dramatically out of whack compensation wise from what the current market will tolerate.
It means we have a flood of garbage and ultra talented people who can’t plug in anywhere.
The ultra talented person will laugh at the offers that employers are willing to make right now and turn them down.
Employers are not staffing senior or skilled hires and want to low ball the ultra talented people who want nothing to do with these corny offers and companies.
So basically employers think they will get someone “good” and underpay them and people who are actually good are not yet willing to capitulate.
And salaries are dropping by like 20-30%.
And anyone in the market who has seen their bills going up due to inflation will not tolerate a salary drop on top of a downlevel / demotion.
People who have debt and a family think the idea of a salary cut is crazy.
So with all the dead and dying startups, tons of people flooding the market, interview process going to hell, people getting upset about the salary and skills disconnects, rapid change in which projects are getting funded and which skills are in demand.
If you are unemployed right now you are likely to be in pain for six months and you will likely need a salary or career reset and you will likely need to reskill and possibly relocate.
That’s where we are.
I'm currently unemployed. But given my life circumstances, I need to make about $170k/year to avoid long-term money problems.
I've seen a few jobs in the $140k-$150k range that I'm pretty sure are mine for the asking. But I know that once the market improves, I'd need to move on to other companies for better pay.
I'm avoiding applying for those jobs because it feels slimy: I'd have to deceive the employer about my intentions to stay.
And since many if not most people in the higher income tax brackets own their homes with fix rate mortgages and they aren’t spending every penny they make, they aren’t really seeing the full affects of inflation.
I'm unmotivated to look for this reason. As an IC6 SRE, I won't get out of bed for less than $250k TC. I have a TC negotiator and an IP employment lawyer to pay before accepting any offer.
If were temporarily unable to find employment, monetizing SaaS product(s) would be my backup plan because there's plenty of potential upside by choosing the category and market fit with solid pricing.
I too have noticed multiple, unrelated recruiting agencies advertising for the same position. This is the first time I recall seeing that. No idea what changed.
Location also seems to matter more than it did a few years ago. There definitely seem to be fewer employers open to fully-remote work.
I said I wanted to work in the US. They told me that they aren't sponsoring visas in the US right now. I was thinking, they're Accenture, how can this be possible?
If you’re just another enterprise CRUD developer like most of the 2.7 million developers in the US, there are literally thousands who can do the job good enough.
When I worked and lived in Atlanta pre-Covid, I could throw my resume in the air and reach out to local recruiters I had worked with for years and have multiple offers within less than a month. This was for your standard Enterprise CRUD jobs.
This was my life from 1996-2018.
A remote job at AWS working in the Professional Services department (full time) consulting fell into my lap in 2020.
I got Amazoned a couple of months ago.
As a backup plan, I started spamming my resume on LinkedIn Easy Apply for bog standard C# CRUD jobs. I never do this. But I had time on my hands this time so why not? I applied for 70 jobs this way and most of my applications weren’t even looked at and my resume was only downloaded twice. LinkedIn shows you this. I heard crickets from doing this.
I had 15 years of C# experience including 7 leading projects and 3 leading projects at AWS in the consulting department. Every job I applied to had 100s of applications.
Before when I was looking I was only competing in the local market. Now I’m competing nationwide.
From my prior network, most companies wanted hybrid or in office.
Don’t cry for me. I had three interviews and two offers within the two weeks for full time consulting jobs that paid around 20% less than I was making in all at Amazon. But one was because of a referral for a mid size company as a “staff architect” and the other two interviews were interested because I was the third highest contributor to a popular complex open source “AWS Solution”.
But, if you take away my AWS account, I turn back into your bog standard “enterprise dev” with above average soft skills
Edit: I see the comment is dead now. But when I was “carrying Amazon’s water” I guess they were referring to a month ago - I had already been Amazoned then.
Amazon was my 8th company in 27 years I’m now on my ninth. It was just another method to exchange labor for money.
I’ve been consistent in my distrust of government power whether it was targeting Amazon, Apple or Google.