Posted by enraged_camel 15 hours ago
https://bsky.app/profile/josephpolitano.bsky.social/post/3mg...
In the mid 2010s, then most notably in late 2020 - 2021, you had people who had no interest in tech entering the industry because they saw it as an easy career to make decent money in.
It got pretty bad in the late 2010s, but it become almost comical in 2021 with people who took a two-week coding bootcamps suddenly landing 6 figure jobs. Some of these people were even working at multiple companies at the same time.
The optimist in me hopes this all shakes out with those people who had no interest in tech moving on to other things. These types of people were not only bad employees, they were also bad for the industry, and in my opinion responsible for culture shift from tech being a place dominating by "nerds" and "geeks" in the 90/00s to the modern "tech-bro" stereotype.
The realist in me though will continue to warn people the tech job they're working at today is likely their last. Between tech industry growth slowing, the excessive over production of tech talent and AI + SASS automating a lot of traditional software development work it's going to be exponentially harder to remain employed in tech in the coming years.
So much so you might as well find a relatively worse paid job if it means you don't have periods of months of unemployment every year.
I remember it was even earlier than that, in the 90s when Bill Gates became the richest man in the world.
You're right about 6 month bootcamps leading to jobs in 2021 though! A true gold rush.
I’ve been looking for work for nearly seven months. I can write low level systems code in C and C++ to web applications in Python and compilers in Haskell. I have tons of industry experience.
Yet most places I apply to ghost me or follow up a month later that the position has been filled.
Companies that have been lying off people claim they are seeing record profits.
It seems like we went from a relatively stable growth to just chaos.
But as per usual, the bust hit just as hard as the boom. Multiple high profile failures in games and initiatives as a whole, Microsoft and Apple decided to stop bleeding money with their respective subscription deals, mobile gaming (from the advent of Genshin Imapct and co) became less an easy cash grab and more a 2nd wing of AAA development, investments dried up overnight for indies (unless 'AI').
And the headcount, of course: https://variety.com/2026/gaming/news/one-third-video-game-wo...
COVID did weird things to the industry, that's for sure.
There was always a "clock" for junior engineers to prove they could handle the high pressure and high intensity work, and as long as they were meeting the bar, they were safe.
They called on-boarding, "Bootcamp", and was for every engineer, junior to staff, to learn the process and tooling. Engineers were supposed to be empowered to take on whatever task they wanted, without pre-existing team boundaries if it meant they were able to prove their contributions genuinely improved the product in meaningful ways. So, come in, learn the culture, learn the tooling, meet others, and then at some point, pick your home team. Your home team was flexible, and you were able to spend weeks deciding, and even if you selected one, you could always change, no pressure. Happy engineers were seen as the secret sauce of the company's success.
I remember that summer, vividly. They told the folks in Bootcamp, pick your home team by the end of the week, or you will be stuck in Bootcamp purgatory. At the same time they removed head count from teams, ours went down to a single one. A new-grad, who had literally just arrived that Monday, picked our team on Tuesday, and then had to watch as most of their fellow Bootcamp mates got left behind.
People wondered what would happen to them for weeks, and then, just like that, the massive layoff sent them all home. It was shitty because from where I sat, it was basically a slot machine. Anyone of the folks in Bootcamp were just as capable, but we had one seat, and someone just asked for it first.
I grinded my 20s away trying to have a successful career and if that just gets pulled out from under me I’ve got absolutely nothing.
While I think a lot more was going on with him than being unemployed, I'm convinced AI hitting the scene had a bit to do with it. They were an older dev 50+.
Too bad I guess.
https://muneebdev.com/software-development-job-market-india-...
For what its worth, I ended up getting a tech job in Japan instead. Ironically, the requirements at U.S. startups are much higher, and U.S. startups fit the stereotype of Japanese work culture more than Japanese companies nowadays.
US: 77,000
European Economic Area: 58,000
India: 51,000
China: 48,000(probably undercounted)
UK: 9,000
Canada: 7,000
Brazil: 6,000
Mexico: 4,000
Aus & NZ: 2,000
Eastern Africa: 300
Western Africa: 500
Southern Africa: 600
Northern Africa: 1,000
Within europe:
Nordics: 3,000
Germany: 15,000
France: 8,000
Italy: 3,000
Poland: 5,000
Romania: 2,000That being said, I don't think it's unfair to point out that creating a massive influx of new developers without jobs that provided good mentorship (most jobs are awful at mentoring junior developers) is going to have huge consequences that we're now dealing with. I think the "learn to code" thing was a massive mistake. Encourage the people that want to, sure, but don't try to pull people in that are only marginally interested in a paycheck.
Not that I disagree with you here, but it is hard to square this with people who are also saying not to worry about AI displacement because there's limitless demand for software.
Well, that's easy to square: the idea that there is limitless demand for software is nonsense. Pure fiction
What is software publishers category? As it seems it’s picking up while Computer system design is the largest negative impact.
I would appreciate if there was a better chart explaining sort of roles and locations that had the largest impact