The Reality Of Tech Jobs in 2024
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- čas přidán 26. 12. 2023
- The chaos around the tech industry and job hunting right now is crazier than ever. If you're looking for a new role, or even a first one, you better be ready to build some trust
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THANK YOU PHASE FOR THE EDIT 🙏 - Věda a technologie
The fact that so many devs are now making videos is an indicator 😂
based and true
The programmer fad is a goldrush, youtubers are selling shovels
@@thedog5kfor every succesful youtube/twitch personality there are tens of thousands of developers with a job
@@JegErN0rsk and a few youtubers sold them shovels.
Thanks for playing.
@@thedog5k you are misinterpreting the saying.
Becoming a developer is infinitely more realistic and lucrative that selling shovels (content creating). Not to mention that to become a content creator your need years of experience, often at FAANG or similar, to get any recognition at all.
@@thedog5k😂😂😂
"You are going to fail interviews"
me: "You guys are getting interviews???"
Well, when we don't get them, we have technically failed them by default :D
Lmfao accurate. Interviews arent even happening.
Of course man! There's loads of them!
So true. Been over a year for me
@@BioPunk128 how long you been looking?
Honestly, this getting a job thing doesn't work that easily without connections 😢
You are right 💯 , my current job cost me $2000 to get after i was job frustrated for years . Now I earn 7k monthly so I can't relate 😅
@stanleygorge8975 $ 2k connection for a good paying job isn't bad . As long as it's sure , it's a game changer 😮
Firstly I was so scared , but at the end he was real and legit ..
Joe bolinger has been a friend and tutor , his connections are the best, trust me he's got the best connections for tech jobs
@ lg
Senior engineer here, 6+ years of experience in embedded development, Rust, golang, c++, you name it, I've done it.
Got laid off 8 months ago. 20 interviews, most of them got to last stage and got rejected with the reason "we hired someone else". About *half* of these interviews were through REFERRALS. If you're going through something similar, you're not alone, in fact, there's millions of us with you, which is why you and I can't get a job lol
Keep going, economic outlook in 2024 is getting better and will in turn cause companies to loosen their hiring freezes
@@s4ltokyo Seems like cope. The Government's Occupational Outlook Handbook predicts programmer jobs will be on the decline from 2022-2032. www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/computer-programmers.htm#tab-6
hopefully lets keep grinding hard.@@s4ltokyo
Go work for the government
Freelance it is
I was sending at least 3 applications a day to different companies and was working on my portfolio website and side projects everyday for 3 months, at the end it paid off when a start up company that i applied to reached out to me and asked if i wanted to do an interview. They were looking for a senior developer but i applied anyways cause the job sounded extremely cool, almost a dream job for me (im a newly graduated web developer with very little experience). the interviews went well and they said the reason they picked me was because of my portfolio and side projects, as well as my description on my cv where i listed my hobbies and personality sounded like someone that would perfectly fit on their team. So guys taking risks and applying for a position not even meant for you can pay off really big. I have now worked her for 4 months and i really love it, they will re-evaluate my salary at the beginning of next year since they say that i'm one of their best employments and risks they've taken and they see a lot of potential in me.
Just wanted to add some hope and positivity to this comment section as 90% of comments are about how depressing and hopeless it feels, keep grinding people
Thanks bro
Just what I needed
7 months since I lost my job.
whats your portfolio bro
damn@@sushantbhargav4652
Thank you for a little light at the end of tunnel. I'm still learning my degree and it was really depressing to watch this since my degree is online and my current job has nothing to do with my future career that I'm studying for. I'm also in my 40s which made me feel even worse. I hope people will see the effort I put into things since I have zero connections and zero experience cuz it's all I have.
@zey- congrats on getting a job. But 3 applications a day is low. Getting a job is a sales activity where you are the product.
You need to target 30 a day.
Being a junior developer actively looking for work has got to be the most insufferable thing I've ever experienced, good luck to everyone out there.
I’ve sent out about 100 applications, with like 2 years of professional experience, and a few projects. Heard back from just one of them, and even then the technical interviewer was so uninterested in me, that he’s basically done everything for me to not pass. Everyone wants senior experience for junior money
@@dinckelman How many of those applications do you follow up on ?
When I just send an application I have the feeling of throwing a bottle into the sea.
So ... I call receptions, find names, write to individuals, name drop, send follow-up e-mails, bombard -apply on their site plus the job board plus linkedin ... I will take no for an answer but YOU WILL ANSWER.
On job app 501. Let’s go!
changes careers, a lot are doing that.
@@thiswallzI wonder what’s out there that’s similar tech related?
2 years of experience here, honest to god it feels like it doesn't matter
I graduated in 2020, yet I have not been able to secure a job due to my introverted nature resulting in negligible connections. Combine that with anxiety and you start hopping between tech stacks. Ah, life sucks right now :(
@@maximus1172 introverted personality is the perfect personality to be a solo entrepreneur :)
Same actually. It kinda sucks that I still don't even get responses to applications the same way as when I was first applying.
I have 2.5 YOE at FAANG and have gotten nothing but automated rejections over the past 6 months. It’s bad for early career people
3 here, and same.
I have 8+ years of experience and it took me about 9 months to land a really good full-time job. Got part-time gigs in between to help keep the resume fresh. Worked on a side project and kept learning about the field I wanted to break into. All paid off too. Got a job at exactly the type of company I wanted making more than my previous full-time role. I think a lot of this still all comes down to luck, which is why continuing to send out those applications and making yourself more marketable is worth it. It's a numbers game at the end of the day.
I wish that I was as confident on the dating scene as I am on the job market :)
@@babelboy-akababz2889 Well I am confident in neither so you're still doing good I'd say :D
Its a luck thing at the end of the day, dont get it twisted. Yes you can increase your luck but skills almost dont matter compared to luck.
@@babelboy-akababz2889 LOL, the dating market and the job market suck right now
As an aspiring Junior Developer and recent 2021 graduate, I have to say that its obvious that networking and who you know is the only way people are getting jobs now.
But also as a 2021 graduate… how were we suppose to network, build trust, and gain experience? We got hit with a worldwide pandemic halfway through our college experience. So internships, co-ops, and other job / learning or trust-building opportunities were gutted for us. And now companies are being extremely greedy and only see people as a means to increase productivity rather than giving people the change to learn and grow and truly discover their strengths and weakness in a developer role that many current seniors were given the ability to a few years ago.
So I ask, what trust can be built now? Those years are gone. Those opportunities were taken from us. Many of us are now just stuck by bad timing.
Theo mentioned ways to do it in the video my dude. Did you listen to it?
As a 40+ junior engineer the fact that everyone casually expects juniors to be under 25 means that it doesn't matter how much I network, there's inherent bias that "is what it is" and that's that. I feel bad for all the people who get into debt to get a degree around my age.
I am a 38-year-old software dev. Landed my first job two and a half years ago. All my team is 10+ years younger :D
Worth to note that I am also the only self-thaught dev out there. I think this still proves that there is a slim chance of success.
So if you love to code - keep pushing.
@@HCforLife1 We found the unicorn!
@@HCforLife1I will probably be the oldest dev in a team when I eventually get a job. I'll be 30 this month.
It's hard to convey this over text, so just know I don't want to be condescending or speak down to you at all, I'm just a little confused:
Why now? Why not start 10-13 years ago? I know there was a huge upsurge in hiring circa 2020, but you had plenty of opportunities to pivot back then if this is a career you wanted, right? I'm guessing that's also what your interviewers are wondering.
@@gianni50725 Usually when people pivot later in life it's because their old career ceased to be viable. For example a friend of mine left civil engineering because there weren't enough projects being done, the market was flooded with engineers, and the pay was falling. I know a mechanic who couldn't turn wrenches anymore after a car accident broke his shoulder. Corporate consolidation and union busting have made some previously OK jobs low wage. See the grocery industry for example. Sometimes medical or other emergencies force older folks to return to work.
Don't forget the huge number of influencers selling courses and boot camps to people who'd never heard of this field before.
At least in the US finding work after 50 is very difficult. This is true across industries but is especially bad in tech. Having worked in management companies consider two things: how little can I pay this guy and how much will he tolerate without quitting? Young folks will work for less and work more unpaid hours. This is true across the board but tech also has the issue that a lot of people especially non technical HR think tech runs on young whiz kids who are computer savants.
The market is in a weird place because employers want senior engineers with junior pay, which is a unicorn dev.
I'd go for it (I mean, senior with junior's pay), but I don't get interviews.
I would take junior pay if they let me have junior level results
Just got a second interview for my first job after applying for over 1000 positions. 🤞🏼
I know we're in a weird spot with the economy and job market right now, and granted I don't even work in tech but weather the storm and the market will get better. The economy will recover and we'll all have stability, my parents have been alive 70 plus years and they've seen phases like this all the time. My dad survived the Vietnam War social crisis, jim crow era, civil rights era, the oil crisis in the 70s, union busting as a railroader in the 80s, economic crisis in the 90s, war in the middle east in the early 2000s, and the housing crisis in 2008. We'll make it through this crap
This was well said. As someone who is also hiring. I can confirm, 100% of my team are people either I or someone else on my team has already worked with prior.
I'm in the process of applying to jobs since august (currently 65 on the list) and finally got first interview 3rd of January so don't lose hope boys and girls! Keep updating your cv and portfolio!
Just one ?
Then you get a job and realize your boss is a complete dick regardless of your dedication. That is what happened in the last 4 months at my last developer job. It makes me want to give up working as an employee.
Good luck!
How did it go?
@@patrickkdev Same my job fuckinf sucked and they fired me
I have an internship lined up. It was ridiculously hard to get a SWE internship so the fact that I have one is a miracle.
I spent 6 months playing around with Open AI and trying to build my own GenAI startup. Didn’t go well ….BUT the skills I learnt allowed me to get a Gen AI role at a mid sized company doing some pretty innovative stuff.
So make the most of your free time in addition to job hunting.
Enjoy it while it lasts lmao 😂
Did you have any previous experience in AI? Do you have a master/phd?
This is a very interesting comment to me. I have a side hustle company, but am afraid to put it on my resume. Could you explain to me what to expect if you put it on your resume? Will you get passed over by potential companies for putting it there?
Difficult mate..
When you don’t have money to pay bills&rent, it will be mostly impossible
Thank you for your honesty. I was lucky to squeeze into the industry after school in 2021 but it was hard, it looks even more difficult now. Chin up fellow programmers, keep going, remember why you started doing this, and take care of yourself.
This is amazing insight. I'm about to graduate with my CS degree this year and greatly appreciate your channel thank you for all you do!
Nice work. I’ve been on the JOBFLIPUSA train for a while, never sold as they are always building.
I hate to say it but everyone became a computer science major and get into software engineering because they thought it would be lucrative. Now the market is beyond over saturated. It’s sad. I’m in career that’s desperate to hire but is underpaid. Why does everything have to be in such extremes?
I agree
It's almost the same with every job, either the demand is very high for people with any experience but underpaid or lower demand for only very experienced people but well paid.
But don't you think it depends on what angle of software engineering everyone went to? Linux/Cloud/Devops is not saturated at all (yet 😨)
This couldn't happen if companies didn't have a need to hire. It's that simple! If there weren't demand for these roles, there wouldn't be such a large number of people transitioning to the IT industry. I'm telling you all, technology won't die; it will continue to evolve and remain in high demand! More and more roles will emerge in the tech sector. It's just a passing phase.
What career are you in?
Maintaining these extremes in the market is an intentional thing that businesses do. Keeping our finances unstable provides capital owners with a cheap and plentiful labor pool. That's why, even when you have a job, budget shortfall is built into your salary. It's bad for businesses if you "get ahead" in your finances so they work to maintain your instability for the sake of their quarterly profit increases.
In the old days, internships were the best way to break in when times were tough. Low/no cost, opportunity to network, access to a massive code base, unique data, learning a business domain, etc…
The reality is companies are now looking much more heavily outside the US for talent. It is what it is. Salaries got inflated and countries in LATAM are brimming with talent to the point where you can get a team of 3 to 5 mid to senior devs in whatever tech on EST time zone, with the same salary you paid a single dev in the US or EU. It's all about money. Connections can help (and I agree college is only good for that), but companies bleed money, and that's the real mover for them.
Well, we wanted remote work and complained about working in office. Well, we got it. xD
@@IvanRandomDude indeed
This! I worked my way up from junior to senior in my company but there is no junior anymore. I am in charge a team of Ukrainians. It hurts that if I was a year later to the market I’d be screwed.
@@violin245 It got harder to get job as a Ukrainian as well. We have like 13 candidates for 1 job offer. 100 to 1 if you are Junior Dev, Designer or QA
@@nianight Yeah, the same thing happens here in LATAM. You see this a lot on entry-level jobs: when a new job is posted on linkedin, in a few hours it has +100 offers. Even if we're more comptetitive than other regions salary-wise, we still have to compete with hundreds of candidates from our own country or region.
Making connections in college these past few years was impossible, that shit was all on zoom and the discord friendships I made were sadly not as strong as I'd hoped. (I'm still hopeful it's just rough)
It’s hard too it feels like everyone is too caught up in their own world
Get ready for some serious boot licking , working unpaid overtime and fake smiles to please everyone around you so you can have a small chance that any one those people will remember you so you can get a referral, what a nice working environment. I would rather move to a 3rd world country and get a remote job for pennies.
TOUR, get a car and TOUR !! You'l be one of the few people to be remembered by the whole class if you do that.
Offer to visit / study / collaborate / go hunting with your class mates.
Once most of the class has seen you on several different screens doing things with several other classmates : BOOM, you are now the class mascot, in a good way.
As a senior dev, the best advice I can give right now is to make some government friends. Get a secret clearance. Government work is stable and hiring like crazy by comparison right now. It doesn't pay fintech money, but I know plenty of young adults that would literally kill to have a nice job that will last more than a year
This and scientific research. Also at a lower pay rate, but there are many interesting jobs available
the problem is the govt jobs take a long time to start your first day because of all the background check stuff. So. if you don't have money saved up to get through that period, then these types of jobs are not preferred
Where are these government jobs? I applied at the IRS and didn't even get an interview.
@@aureliaFP federal jobs have a lot of competition. Look for state jobs
I teach CS at the college level and as part of my class I put students in groups and just require them to interact with each other. Play games, watch a movie, get lunch together. I don’t care. Just try and make some friends. I get quite a bit of pushback on it from students but your video encourages me to keep doing it.
Nice work!!
I’ll tip my 20+ year SW experience hat to you. Keep doing this!!!
Glad I have years of experience because even that doesn't seem to be helping much right now to even make a lateral move. Definitely felt rough the last 2 months trying to move up or even to something more interesting than my current job which I'm glad to have survived layoffs but almost too demoralized to appreciate.
Great video Theo, thanks for sharing this.
The comment about networking being the focus at a college is very true. That's how I approached it a few years back. I already had the programming knowledge from my self-learning, just no one to really network with. Only thing that hurt my plan was the pandemic and being remote for two years... unfortunate but at least I got the degree.
I'm self taught, with many years of experience. You can still network on the job itself, college is not the only place.
I dropped out and found a position at a startup unpaid until funded. I found it through a club at my university that connects entrepreneurs together.
If I had any advice for anyone starting college it would be to use the university more than it uses you. You can build and make connections here.
15 years of experience here in software engineering and developing web applications and I’ve been job hunting like crazy for 2 months now with no end in sight. I’ve never seen the tech industry this depressed before and I’m starting to question whether I should try a career change. I can’t even imagine how it must be for juniors right now. I’m senior level and I still can’t find work.
Thanks for the feedback. I dropped college last year (Computer Science major) and I am still looking for a new are of interest that AI won't mine so soon
@@ketsune23 I know there’s a huge scare with A.I. replacing developers, but I don’t really see that happening. I’ve used A.I. before as a coding resource and it’s extremely helpful, but it helps more as an aide than as a full developer. Kind of like Stack Overflow, there’s plenty to provide ideas, insight, and even code for devs, but the layman was never able to get what they needed from copying code from Stack Overflow. The same holds true for A.I. I think the problem right now is just the economy in general which is sliding into a major recession.
It’s quite funny when everyone blames this recent slump on ai…like no..perhaps if AI was bringing in billions like a new web bubble then we’d see some hiring ..but it’s not ..and it’s also no doing much at the moment for productivity outside of automation..
But yes you’re right , Hugh interest rates are to blame
@@GiantRogueWave i am gonna complete my under grad degree in information technology in 2026. What do you think the status of recession would be by then?
@@Hardik-nq7xm Unfortunately I’m not entirely sure how the economy will look a few years from now. There are a number of factors that could change the situation including the results of the 2024 election. But between rampant government spending which has been causing the most recent inflation spiral, spiking interest rates, and our mounting national debt I’m not predicting good times to come especially long term. I think austerity measures and stagflation are likely in the coming years. That will hit everyone hard though, not just those in the tech industry. I think tech will stabilize and recover, but it’s oversaturated right now with talent and it will be tough for awhile for juniors especially if senior level tech are being forced into the situation of being willing to work for junior level pay.
Really great advice for any time. It is who you know, not always what you know.
I have 15 years of experience, with f500 companies also. It's honestly not been this hard since I was a brand new dev so I feel for you Jr devs out there. Extremely oversaturated atm and tbh I think they think AI will come in and make devs irrelevant (I dismiss this notion)
I have been in IT for over 20 years and this is the most difficult IT market on memory for me.
The market right now feels weird. I am 20 years old and in sweden. I am currently working as a front end dev at a company here, and it is great, but I also want to continue studying, but that feels so much more risky compared to just continuing to work.
Keep working. Study after work if you have time/energy.
Don't leave. It's a bloodbath
A number of years ago I was looking for a job in software. Had a really hard time. The job I landed in the end was in a new team with someone I had worked actively with for many years. Best decision I ever made.
i.e. "its who you know, not what you know"
These companies will have a great awakening when there are no more senior devs to hire. And because they weren't developing junior devs to be loyal to their company, they'll now have a team of far more junior devs and be far less productive than they ever would've been hiring one or two at a time. And these devs will be so jaded that they won't hold any loyalty to this company and often dip right after being trained.
The companies show no loyalty to us. Why would we show any loyalty to them?
You well articulated networking in a nuanced way.
Fresher , I apply to almost 20+ jobs every day on average from 3 months with no result to see. Financial status is crushing me from inside
Just got my first job in the industry with my Bachelor's... I spent almost a year applying for jobs, tuning my resume, etc... Within a month or two of actually networking and trying to get my name out there, I found the company I'm at now. It's probably not my "dream job", and not as glamorous as some, but this was all just to say that networking really does make a difference!
Did you have internships before?
@@newhorizon3229 No internships, which probably did make it significantly harder as well.
How exactly do you "network" that idea is so foreign to me
i finished school last year and took some time to rest and work on personal projects, then around summertime i started applying and got one interview right away but they found someone more experienced, Ive applied to every available local job posting since but they've just completely dried up so ill probably start working at the grocery store soon and do on my own projects
Keep pushing
keep going everyone 🙏conditions are not great right now, but they will get better again.
you've got this!
Long story short, the best bet for you as a developers is keep contributing and meeting new developers. It will open doors in the future.
Sure, and if you're homeless, the key is to keep meeting other homeless people.
@@bigneiltoo lol
I haven't been looking for a job recently, but I still get contacted by a interesting companies simply because they saw my experience and/or side-projects. You don't have a lot of control over your experience, but you certainly can create side-projects. I'd say they're the next best thing after having direct connections in the company, just have to make sure the side-projects are as close to real-world projects as possible.
I always thought this was a good idea, separates you from the rest and shows you have interest.
Not sure they need to be close to real world projects, but side projects are definitely a must. Nearly every valuable skill I have learned was through side projects.
Company projects, in my experience, were always constrained by terrible tech stack/depth, ultra constrained time-frames. That isn't an environment to learn in.
Even if they are using some decent, "new" technology like Docker, it always seems to be over-complicated/over-engineered in their use-case. So you won't be able to learn the real beauty the real value these solutions provide.
Killing it with the daily uploads Theo!
Joined the market in late 2018. It's astounding how much the climate has changed since then.
As a senior eng, it's pretty easy for me to get interviews, but the processes so far have been negative, either on my side or on the company's side. I'm not sure it was that easier before to be honest. I think, at the end of the day, every time I was hired was because I liked the people I talked to and they liked me. I can only agree about networking / referals, that's the most pleasant path to get hired.
Have you ever ran into companies that seem to be disappointed if you don't know some meta framework like next even if you have extensive knowledge in other languages? It feels like hiring is being done by HR who think languages are difficult to transition between or re-learn.
Of course, these people can't code, they have no idea how similar languages or frameworks can be. Many hiring processes are carried out by people who don't know what they're talking about, from start to finish. HR as a first point of contact, managers as a second, and very often, developers on the third round, who are just as clueless and misguided @@Sammysapphira
@@SammysapphiraAll the time.
I agree with you 100%. In this job market, networking is really the key to landing a job.
Yes.
Well articulated sir. This is good to understand as I enter this market. Thank you for this insight!
The irony is that the reason developers are the highest cost IS because they are not willing to take bets. They pass the same few developers around to each other, inflating their salary with each move (since the only reason to move is a higher salary) over-inflating salaries where they become such a high cost center that they are less likely to take bets, continuing the cycle. So companies are paying for those non-bets bets anyways through salaries. To break the cycle, there needs to be some compromise; junior developers must be willing to take much lower salaries for the first year or two, in case it doesn't work out with the expectation of a big jump if it does, and companies must be willing to take a loss every once in a while and create more of a in job training culture.
As a junior developer, I tell them to give me the lowest salary possible for a developer. In an interview, the hr woman slightly laughed at how low I wanted, but that was enough for me. She suggested that we can do better than that.. We even doubled it and more for my own benefit, considering I had to move, but in the end, I still didn't get the job. I didn't even get to talk to the manager and possible getting hired. I thought that was just a trick or maybe the hr woman made a bad move to get the salary this high, ending up in a straight up refusal from the manager.
I don't know anymore, but what I know is, juniors like us are desperate and it seems like, without connections we just can't go on with our career. I had to work on something else in the mean time to sustain myself and with the low expectations. I stopped applying for some time, cuz I felt so drained, another day, another decline from the companies. I then went on to try the software testing and game testing, where I only got one opportunity, but because of the circumstances I was in with money and having to move, I couldn't afford it. Testers are paid literal peanuts in my country, almost any job is paid better. They eventually wouldn't want to deal with me anymore, after I resent them countless times the cv to give me another chance. Not even mentioning that other companies just decline with an automated message.
Yeah it's pretty brutal. The only easy way is to make internal transfers within your own company. For example, I wanted to switch from Software Engineer to DevOps.. I had no luck when applying to jobs outside my company, so I did an internal transfer instead.. the downside is you don't get the salary bump when doing it this way, but I'm gaining the skills and experience I need to hopefully make the next job hop easier when the market is better.
~25 Years experience, Video Game Industry. A couple months of passive searching while my employer was clearly running out of money. Then stepped it up and took a couple months of active searching ending on 2 high Senior offers while in the process with 3 other high value employers. It's more competitive. Staying current, reputation and networking are more important than ever. But it's not a terrible market. Also employers are taking their time because they can be more picky than they used to be.
the webdev job market are more competitive than game market is
I am intrigued about video games industry. How do indie and AA studios manage the risk of spending and be at peril of rapid culture changes? I am aware great games are made all time but nobody knows them.
Would love to see a video on how to make good choices in hiring. I think your experience could bring a lot to the table for all of us who are startup founders, have to hire in a new position etc.
I am not Theo, but looking how a person codes can filter out a lot of people. Some people are so horribly slow (copy paste save with a mouse) that I sometimes wonder why they even have a job. And if you see somebody flying through code like Primeagen then you have a unicorn employer. You need to have seniors at your side who can evaluate them, how fast and how knowledgeable the candidates are.
I graduated from a code camp in Aug 2021, landed my first front end job in Jan 2022, got laid off Oct 2023. I have had 3 interviews so far, but wasn't selected. Been working on a full stack app since. Hoping the new year brings as all some damn jobs.
Best of luck!
A lot of folks think backend / FE are the only programming jobs but, I’m in the AV industry programming in Javascript on Cisco webex devices. I’m doing python on Extron processors. These devices have lots of APIs. You can create bots for webex platform or use microsoft teams api’s to automate stuff etc
I’d say folks are missing out, everyone is dealing with remote work. There are few good AV programmers out there, its an untapped industry. Just gotta have common sense and knowing audio/video stuff helps too.
AV, Embedded and other areas where you need to work directly with some tech are quite niche in terms of accessibility for applicants. They are not found in every village, town or even city. Not even every country has more than a couple of such jobs.
It's like learning Haskell - a good language and everything, but almost no one works with it. You can find a Haskell job, but outside of that you can find a thousand times more JS jobs.
@@Ivan-Bagrintsev That is fair to say. Just saying that folks should expand their search outside of traditional SDE roles, there’s a lot of hidden industries out there.
Do you have any good resources for learning AV stuff, specifically decoding video streams from OBS?
I attempted to make a peer to peer video app, where peers with faster internet speeds are at the top of a tree feeding the signal down to users with lower internet speeds in the same geographic area to keep the whole network running fast enough through WebRTC, but couldn't figure out how to decode the video codec to be able to run in a browser. I bought Jan Ozer's book but it didn't help my use case, and tried to study the spec to decode the stream into binary myself. The Server and P2P network was easy. Decoding not so much.
Cold applying is just about the only way someone like me could get a job so I'm really glad I got in the market before this massive push for nepotism
This is completely accurate. I was lucly enough to get my first dev job when the market was hungry for developers. Since then the jobs I have moved to have been based on personal contacts, to the point of being offered the position without interview. The best advice to anyone both trying to get into the industry or trying to move in the industry is to make connections.
Thank you for your honesty. I am searching and find what you are saying is true. A lot of people lie online, so I appreciate your honesty
Took me 6 months of applying and probably 20 interviews to finally get an offer. I have 10 years of experience in my line of work. Yep, the market is tough right now. Obviously, I could have taken a lower paying job than what I was looking for, but so can anybody; nobody wants to work for peanuts when they know they can get more.
What comp were you targetting?
Thinking of giving up on having a career at all. It’s just kinda a nightmare all around. Not just getting a job but keeping it, and dealing with constantly keeping up appearances. There are ways to make money and if you’re savvy you can get around most obstacles. That’s what I think anyway. But it does take courage and dedication.
The thing is the safety and longevity isn’t even there anymore. At least working for yourself forcing to constantly learn and be agile, which means you’re always able to move onto opportunity when it comes. If you’re stuck at a job you’ll prob be working with tech debt and get fat and dumb. And when you get laid off or fired you’ll have no survival skills. And you may have hard time getting hired again. From what I understand experience isn’t always a good thing especially in tech with how much it progresses. There are old engineers right now refusing to use AI for example.
Well, from experience... this was always so. The trust was always an important thing - its just that now, it has become crucially important. Now companies have no time or money or ... resources to test and check the trust they can have with you ( by hiring you and then finding out after 6 months or so) - now they need to know that right away from the start.
Amazing insights! Thanks a lot 👍👍
so in a nuttshel what i heard you say was it's basically pointless for someone new to the industry to and get a job. which i would agree with. it's not the same market it was even 2 years ago.
Things get radically easier if you have a portfolio of real, non-bootcamp projects. It shows that you are actually interested in programming and thus have a lot higher internal push to do well.
I couldn't agree more!
The issue is how to get those projects when no one wants to hire you.
This is true, but it still took me ~250 applications out of school. It’s still possible, but I will say that if you don’t genuinely enjoy and get these fundamental concepts it’s going to be a rough ride.
@@lukeweston1234 also true!
@@matiaslupo5930 Don't do things solely to get hired. Make things because you enjoy making them. Suprisingly, when you stop looking for jobs and focus on making real projects for your own satisfaction, that is exactly when you have the highest chances of landing a job.
I've been unemployed for two months, and applying for the last 5 months. It is so frustrating at times, I've gotten maybe 12 interviews but never any success off the back of them. It really feels like such a tease and imposter syndrome sets in after everyone. Anywho, gonna keep grinding on my side projects and see where that takes me.
Tech is becoming what finance has been, and if you haven’t been around the business school in your university nows a time to learn how to network effectively. We’re going to have to morph into a conglomerate of talent that pushes each other forward.
Using remote work model companies can save a lots of money on office space. On top of that, if job can be done remotely then they can also hire people from other countries for less money.
That's not an issue - as this was happening before. The real problem is the economic crisis which consuming the Tech industry. The money flow has been literally blocked comparing to previous years. It's bad out there. Hopefully, it will eventually get better. But my bet is that we would need to wait a year for that to happen.
that's true. 60k usd/year is big in turkey, india and china.
@@enescanaydn3617I am one of those third world remote workers. Life quality is really good but nothing lasts forever, so I strive to be better every year.
So when Twitter fired a ton of people, most other large tech companies followed suit and did at least some firings. This raised the unemployment rate of the entire industry and has put some downward pressure on salaries. The tech industry itself is negotiating like a union. This is bound to happen due to the large amount of consolidation, which is borne out of every company desiring to be unicorn, e.i. every company designing itself to be bought out.
The people fired at twitter needed to be let go because they where dead weight. X has more features and still operates better.
@@internetpointsbank I'm not arguing whether that was good or bad. My point is that other tech companies saw that as an opportunity.
Twitter didn't start a trend of firing people. Musk is out of cash, and for the rest of the tech industry the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The bubble has burst, and we as tech workers are trying to keep bouncing over the remaining soap.
This video is so relatable, I have been job hunting for 1.5 year for IT support, swe intern, and any tech related jobs. I will be graduating in a semester soon. Only startup companies would consider people for interviews and mid-large companies don't even get to interview at all. Thought my career would end if I don't have internship soon before graduating in May
This really resonated with me as an engineer looking for their first job through this entire crazy market. Thank you Theo. There are a ton of opinions on how to differentiate yourself as a candidate, a lot of them concentrating on “upskilling” and the like. I saw a post on linked in today, that advised “reading tech blogs” as a way to differentiate yourself. Like what? 😂 i think this is the first sane advice I’ve heard an influencer express. The issue as I see it is that there just isn’t a good way to establish trust and competency via the established hiring process. When there was a ton of free money being thrown around that was fine. But as a way to honestly and successfully gauge the potential of candidates the whole screening process just absolutely sucks, and we are all paying the price, engineers and companies alike.
and this is how feudalism begins and ends competition
Mcdonalds cashier work for you!
I have been recommending people to start a company, make a product on their own, do something new, because if you're going to never get the job you wanted, why not make your own? Job market is truly horrible now.
I agree, behand this companies are also people like you and me😎
It’s better to hire than to be hired😉
You omitted the fact that most startups fail just 1 out of 1000 succeed, also since now everybody it's staring their own company you need to start at the top to even make some market which it's a lot of time and effort for something that might not work out
@@Fran-kc2gu You just have to avoid playing in the corporate yard
Don't try to build a new Walmart, try to build a bakery or a fast food drive-thru instead.
Or you can create a service that helps at the local level.
If you manage to realize a big project that earns a lot, corporations like Blackrock will force you to sell your business to them or they will stage some affair against your company.
Find out what happened to Binance and Blackrock
True. But keep in mind that you talking about somethings that usually need a team of people, with competition around the corner. You would need to be extremely lucky to match - all round skills, which might be a problem if you are at the beginning of your career; timing and a great idea non other company thought about yet. Not saying that it isn't possible, but... extremely unlikely to succeed.
@Techscribedeaf
This is absolutely the best time to start something new. The fact that most people think it's too hard or there are too many problems. Solving problems are the very reason it'll be more fun than anything else.
literally needed to hear this right now. about to graduate with B.S. in computer science, but I have a good job as a digital media consultant/ad manager... I have so many connections in that space, and I think taking those connections towards building my own company that leverages A.I. in managing digital assets is probably the smarter path for me than trying to cold applying to a bunch of software engineering internship/junior roles. Seriously, thank you for this video!!
The advice of meeting people to find a job feels like a cop out to me. It is just really frustrating advice to hear that no matter how much you work or improve, someone else that is naturally more extroverted and likable will get hired before you. I feel like it is just a really hard market right now, and people are just grasping at straws for advice to give.
I thought he explained it pretty well actually. As he said it really is about risk management. One of the greatest risks that many of these employers take on is who they hire. The best way to reduce that risk is to have some way of trusting that the person you are hiring knows their stuff and is going to vibe well with the current team. So referrals from your team for people they worked with in the past is a great way to reduce that risk. It may sound like favoritism but its not in this case. Its not a manager trying to get all his/her family members jobs in a company. Its a manager trying to reduce the risk of hiring somebody they have never worked with before for a crucial role in the company. How can you make yourself look less risky and more likely to provide a return on investment at the companies you are applying to?
Got some bad news for you: extroverts have always found it easier to get jobs, and probably always will. This is reality. Don't shoot the messenger. (Extroverts dominate society, sad fact. Know how I know? Search for CZcams videos encouraging introverts to be more extroverted, then search for videos encouraging extroverts to shut up, sit down, and stay quiet so we can all get a moment's peace. We all know which of those things you'll find more videos for).
The good news: interpersonal and networking skills can be learned, as long as you don't start with the mindset of "I'm an introvert and bad with people, natural extroverts have it easy". Should you have to learn those skills? Doesn't matter. This is the world we're living in.
In these times, i feel good working with IT in Norway, a country where the salary is not as good as it is in the U.S but where you actually are protected from spontaneous layoffs, or can at least get a hefty payout in case the employer REALLY needs to lay off people (there are however very strict rules for doing this)
That nonsense stops companies from hiring.
I got laid off with a year worth of salary in Chile after working for 5 years. Bought a 4090, 83" LG oled, sound system.. Even gave the car a fkin $2k chamaleon paint job. I never thought packages were not good in the US.
Only stops them from hiring people they don't need. It's the same here in the Netherlands and many other nice countries.
“Don’t cold apply” is pretty bad advice lol. There’s nothing wrong with failing interviews. That’s how you get better at them. The more interviews you fail, the more you know what areas of your skillset you have to work on.
exactly
My interpretation is that if you are cold applying with the expectation of landing a job that way expect failure. Not to say it couldn’t happen, but the competition is fierce and it doesn’t allow many good ways to differentiate yourself from others that make you an attractive proposition to risk averse companies. I agree though that continuing to practice interviewing while learning to thrive despite rejection is an extremely valuable skill though. being failure adverse is a sure way to not get a job.
I got my longest job in years (7) by a cold apply. Back then I had worked at a good number of companies already, though. Years after, the boss told me he hired me due to certain things I did that brought his attention during the interview in person and days before. And that was not the only time. I think I only got a job by referrals and networking twice. And curiously, can't remember one in which I landed the final job when a HR or etc had contacted me out of the blue. But I am a graphic designer, game artist and illustrator (worked a lot at start ups, though). There are important differences with programming jobs (HTML, CSS and some JS were only "nice-to-have" stuff in my usual profiles).
Time is limited and there is an optimal balance of cold applying, networking, portfolio work, resume building, etc. Cold applying in-and-of-itself might not be a bad idea, but doing nothing but cold applying seems horribly inefficient.
I was in a shitty position a few months back, making hardly any money and writing software that ran the company. It took me a month and hundreds of applications before I got an interview, and that interview turned into 3 interviews and now I work for them.
My experience has been so shitty I got an email a week ago after hunting for a year that "my resume had been selected based on my experience out of 300 applicants!". I just had a recruiter hit me up for the first time in a year.
I spent the first few months not slamming applications and maybe I should have. I just worked on my own app instead. Now I almost have an entire app ready to launch.
wow your experience really similar to mine, but my hunting period is 8 month.
interesting ! what kind of app have you build ?
1 year exp as a front end dev. Couldnt find a job for 6 months. So I just gave up 1 year ago. Recently started coding again and picked up c++ and I like it way more than coding frontend apps. Probably gonna look for a job again soon tho, wish me luck 😅
Have a good lucky, my friend
@@trechosdelivros4445 Thank you!
Bro game dev used to be more competitive than webdev but after recent layoffs, now they're very similar in regards of competition.
Which jobs can a C++ developer apply nowadays?
I had a really hard time with the course load in college. I'm talking like 12-14 hour days every day if you count being in class along with labs, homework, and studying, and even longer if I wanted to try to get some work done on portfolio/ personal projects. I really did not have time to make personal connections at ALL in college and I feel like the advice is always "just network!" When? When was I supposed to have the time or energy to do that?
Not to mention, to be completely honest, I kind of did not like CS students at my college. There is a huge amount of dick waving, quite a few abrasive personalities, and a general lack of social skills. Worst of all, no one seems to have any time for anything that is not CS. CS is cool and all and building CRUD apps CAN be fun, but at the end of the day it is a job. I have interests here in the real world, and I found it very hard to connect with most CS majors because of that.
Oh well, 1000 applications into the void route it is.
Oh my god, same! I had a hard time finding anyone with similar interests as me in college. In my experience, all anyone wanted to do was maintain their grades and get recruited. Couldn't find anyone who simply enjoyed programming/dev and was up for learning together.
This resonates with me a lot. Although I graduated 6 years ago I still see a lot of that in the industry today. Software tends to attract a lot of people with huge egos that are not the best people to work with, unfortunately. I also enjoy making crud apps as you mentioned but yes there is a life outside work. I see software development and engineering as an all-or-nothing type of career to be honest. You are either fully invested in it and coding after work because you are trying to exceed expectations for the next performance review, or you do something else with your life after work, but let others within your team overshadow you since they are overworking themselves. I have found this to be true when I worked in FAANG and a lot of people like myself suffered mentally. Non software engineers don’t understand that you really do have to put your whole life AND identity into it
@@asciimagewanna have a group? Perhaps, we can start as online community to help and learn from other programmers?
New subscriber always watching your videos very interesting❤
I couldn't agree more about the college point. While education is incredibly important, I truly believe it is the connections you make that really matter
I've been looking for a job for the last 5 months now, it's been brutal out here. I'm glad I began learning software development at the end of last year but god damn what a time to choose to learn.
I'm not giving up, I have no other choice but to make this happen, but every single day with constant emails of being declined or completely ghosted has worn me down quite a lot. It's hard to believe I'll ever break into the industry.
It took me 10 months to find my current job. It was well below my expected starting pay, and was outside of scope of the jobs I was applying for. Was going for junior network/sys admin roles, got a job doing vendor support for a highly proprietary product I had never heard of before.
I was at about 5 months into my job search this time last year. Good luck, and hang in there
God will change your life
Even as an IT Project manager this is ridiculous 5 years experience. Ghosting, no interviews now im working a job half my salary now i feel my experience means nothing and now i have to.find a new career
that sucks man
@@KM-zd6dq yeah man
I graduated with my computer science degree in 2019, applied to thousands of places, in the area or even out of the area. I've only gotten into Start Ups, which usually fails, meanwhile all the bigger tech companies were all rejections, this field has a lot of stages in the interview process, I usually fail at 1st or 2nd coding stage.
Leetcode is cool, but most of the time it's not directly related to the projects the companies are working on. Like why not give a segment of code(s) from an older project that the company used to have problems with and ask the interviewee to see if they can identify the problems and what needs to be done, and what strategies can be done.
THAT is a much better indicator to be fit for the company than random leetcode questions.
As for how I'm doing now? 5 years later, in 2024, I'm earning Minimum wage working in the 'any job' category for now, also my family forced the medical field upon me and I'm regretting every second of it.
The market's really weird right now. During my search a lot of people called me and I found something and I'll start in a few days. During this time I had a few coworkers from the past volunteer to introduce me to their bosses - and their bosses were looking. I interviewed a lot and failed quite a few times - but I was also interviewed by people I contacted cold (blew a startup interview). I was busy interviewing for about 2 months before I found a job. I guess I'm finally considered experienced enough for this to happen. I'm very lucky. A few years old I started to wonder if I was the victim of ageism - now it seems to be the reverse of that.
@0:18 - Theo: I've never seen the job market quite like this before...
Gen-X and Elder Millennials: Welcome back to 2008 through 2010 aka Sequoia Capital RIP Good Times
Honestly, I'm kind of a junior ( never went to college self thought ) I joined a team and after a week on a project with no clear documentations or tests I started helping other developers get familiar with the project. It really depends how much you care. A junior can get up to speed in a week or two without much mentoring and slowing other members down.
really depends on the code base but I totally get your sentiment
Absolutely. Good work my man. Put yourself in your bosses shoes - your fit and value in the team is way more important than leetcode skills. You are the rare one, not the other way around.
Big tech employee here - a lot of the layoffs happening in tech of course have something to do with the economics of the post-COVID world, but a lot more to do with a shift to AI. Because of this most layoffs are because the job function doesn’t align with the goals of the company anymore. My fortune 10 company is still hiring, but not for its short-length context revenue stream, but for its gamble in AI. This is important context to also understand.
oh, AI is really coming after programmer?
The fundamental problem is wealth inequality. Shareholders and executives prioritizing their personal profits over growth of the company.
If executives can cash out in a few years, why would they care about training people who wont be fully fledged until after those executives leave?
That is truth. A friend offered me a huge paying job that requires a bachelor's degree in C.S. years of data experience... ect for a Data Admin job at her job. I am a high school drop out that taught myself multiple tech stacks just since January. She said that after watching what I accomplished and built in such a short time, she truly believed I could do the same with this position.
Sounds like complete BS. Learning multiple tech stacks means that you are not even remotely going to master any of them. Definitely your friend's colleagues need someone who can do nothing on a "huge paying job"
@@Ivan-Bagrintsevnop, learning multiple stacks signals that you are capable of being trusted to solve problems. It signals that you are getting an understanding of the wider ecosystem and building reasoning about the different values different tech stacks have. Most companies don’t need a “master of one” and wish to hire someone they can trust to own the solution and get the job done.
@@Ivan-Bagrintsev never said I mastered them in a year. I've built and launched three different projects and worked my ass off. Just because you couldn't do it doesn't mean I couldn't. 🤷
@@MrManafon I appreciate that. She saw my willingness to learn without staying stuck in one area. I have no life, 🤣 just learn, practicing repeat
@@AylaCroft, oh, but I can. This year I launched three commercial projects on three different stacks. And I say this not because I'm proud of it, but because it's complete BS. I spent too much time learning a new stack instead of mastering one, and, yeah, I'm getting much better at programming in general and these stacks in particular, but it would be much better in terms of quality, difficulty, experience earned, and free time, if I could just concentrate on one stack.
So basically, the difference between being homeless and being employed is some guy who says they trust you. Guess I'm gonna be homeless
This is a great video, I'd enjoy hearing more from you.
Two comments; both about what you seem to not want to talk about.
First, near the beginning you said there are a lot of CZcamsrs discussing why companies are not spending money and so you are not going to get into it, but I would like to here your take on it from a IT point of view.
Second, you mention not to get you started on internships,... during this horrible job market I found it an opportunity to go back and get my masters degree which has me open to internships, and internships are the ONLY job opportunity I can gain ANY traction with right now, I would very much enjoy you "getting started on" your take on internships.
Solid advice Theo.
Isn't this mostly in the US?
During COVID, big tech companies overhired in hopes that the situation would persist for a long time. They were wrong, so these companies began mass layoffs.
Outside of US things was and are different.
So it's not "The Reality Of Tech Jobs in 2024", it's "The Reality Of Tech Jobs in 2024 in US".
Feeling the same way. My company in Europe cant find enough people that speak the local language (we work closely with customers) and know more about programming than the latest trend in frontend development. So many people who know React inside out and most of them struggle with writing out a relatively simple SQL query and using the command line. Its crazy how the hypecycle culture in US Tech has led to a flood of insanely specialized developers that dont understand even broadly how computers work.
I’d say his perspective is mostly Bay Area centered. It’s not the same way elsewhere in the US, although we don’t have that astronomical total comp either
Same, there is still shortage of developers here in Europe, and the salaries are still very much above average. But of course it used to be better a couple of years ago, I can feel the sentiment here is slightly more cautious as well.
This is the first time I've seen a CZcamsr say the hard truth, that hiring a junior dev is risky and will bring productivity down.
its a miserable economic system that throws people in the trash if they dont add more profit
they add you because they make more money from you that's it. not because they like your teeth@@Gustavo-wh1rd it's good to know it allow you to know how to sell yourself.
@@Gustavo-wh1rd, how much money do you spend on people you don't know and don't care about everyday then?
@@Ivan-Bagrintsev its an inhumane system where you are only considered a human being if you generate profit
@@Gustavo-wh1rd, so what was the number again?
I agree with this. Referrals are very important right now
Wow Theo…every word is GOLD
Ah, yes, the old "juniors aren't good enough". And later we will hear "there's a labor shortage! OMG!"
So everyone has to start as an expert to get an internship.
This seems to be very US-centric.
Thanks for the constructive advice
This is really just great advice in general, despite the profession. The longer you are in the workforce, the more you understand it is more about connections and getting people to like you. Those are the people who make it far, not the most "intelligent". If you are new out of college, you need to understand this. Do the best you can at your job, make friends, and have fun. Eventually opportunities will open up.