2w ago

If you're planning on being a software developer, find a different career ASAP. The industry is collapsing and employment prospects are becoming slimmer and slimmer.

A lot of people will disagree with me on this one. I've been a software engineer for 35 years now. I've worked at everything from tiny companies where I'm the only dev, to startups, to massive corporations with countless employees. And I've never seen anything like what's happening now.

There are four factors:

H1-Bullshit. Never before have so many H1-B visas been allowed. And the number is only going up. For the uninitiated they're work visas that cap the amount the dev can legally be paid and chain them to their job so they can't quit. They're horribly exploitative and bring down everyone's paycheck.
The software already built is good enough. Organizations already have either decade+ old software solutions in place or third party vendors that provide those solutions. There will always be bug fixes and maintenance but nobody is building new software from scratch anymore. The stuff that already exists is good enough at what it does that it isn't worth the investment to make something new. That means fewer devs are needed for writing that software.
Destruction of the public sector. A LOT of unemployed and experienced devs are about to be looking for jobs. If you have less than 10 years of experience be prepared for finding a job to become nearly impossible. Even if the next administration takes a different approach it will take many years to undo just the damage that's already been done.
AI. I actually don't think AI on it's own will be terribly destructive to the industry. It's a tool that will make devs more efficient and cause a slight drop in openings. But combined with everything else it's just one more factor hurting the industry.

When people ask me how to get into software development I tell them not to bother. I encourage you to consider it as well. The golden age of IT careers is over.

36 comments

Why don't people just get into game development?
It's not like we're going to run out of video games to make.
- Unless you're getting into a unionized one, or working strictly for yourself, game development is hell.
  
  I don't think you know what you're talking about.

I... somewhat agree. Job postings are currently at a local minimum, and if you're intermediate/junior it is pretty rough out there.
But postings are still around 2021 levels overall, which while not amazing, still have jobs available. I got a couple of decent-but-not-amazing offers last year.
Really the biggest trend I've noticed is that real seniors are genuinely impossible to find/hire. Hiring has become a spamfest. Companies use LLMs to poorly filter resumes. Candidates use LLMs to shoddily write resumes and cover letters. Filtering through this to find the actual senior vs. the guy who worked at FAANG for 3 years and got a staff title for it is virtually impossible. Getting your resume seen through the cruft is also impossible, so many great candidates never make it into the process in any meaningful way. As soon as we get into an interview, it's been incredibly obvious who the good candidates are, and we've hired most of them. But getting good candidates to the interview stage is nigh impossible for candidate and employer.
I guess from my perspective the job market is there, but the process is absolutely horrendous.
- I think this is the most accurate take. I'm not at the "don't go into the field" take, but Amazon and Microsoft have been pumping boot camp devs into the market for a decade now promising high paying jobs just so they could do this, flood the market with juniors and pay them peanuts .
  So juniors and intermediates are everywhere, the market has been flooded. Also anyone who has written a few lines of python thinks they're a full stack engineer now and label their resume as such, so exactly what you said, the hiring market is flooded with spam.
  My company rejects so many people on the first screen who have great resumes but then can't write more than the basic for loops or if statements on the page.
  Also AI is becoming a crutch for people. You will not get AI in interviews people. You need to know how to do it yourself. I don't care if you use it for work, but when you're interviewing I'm hiring an engineer, not a prompt writer.
  So, the trick is proving you're above the hordes of shit developers, and that's going to mean learning new stacks, pushing yourself harder, and probably doing some real networking. (For those reading who may be looking soon)
  The 2010s and covid told people that anyone can code. Well, here it is, the market flooded. Now it's "anyone can code, why should we hire YOU." And you better have an answer for it.

there is no upper limit to H1b pay, but it must match or exceed the prevailing wage for that skill or the peers at the worksite. That's the law, and that's my experience when I was an H1b. Where do you get this shite?
people are absolutely building new software.
I can't address the false consensus but I do know my union IT job has people with 30 years of experience AVERAGE, and a culture of skills maintenance. Obviously, your mileage varies.
Ai FUD is just FUD. We survived crypto-bros and AgileEverything, and our odds are good.
- union IT job
  Figure it out now, techies, because it will be too late when a 23yo fascist declares you an enemy of the state
- I don't have personal experience, but it's my understanding that most H1B holders get paid well below market rates, and I have no doubt that the DoL under this administration will greatly exacerbate the problem. https://www.epi.org/publication/h-1b-visas-and-prevailing-wage-levels/

This seems to be a post about USA.
- Yes, I'm in Canada and a software programmer for 25 years, and yes it's not the golden age anymore, but we don't have those H1B visa problem here. It also really depends of your field, if it's frontend web/javascript it's harder to find. If you are backend or embedded linux etc, it's better I think.
  Some fields like FPGA is highly looked for too.
  
  From what I've seen, US programmer salaries are a lot higher than other countries. What we could be seeing is American programming salaries going more in line with the international market.
  
  25+ years here too, Sweden. Agree that I've heard frontend and mobile apps isn't what it was a few years ago but backend, embedded and cybersec is constantly hiring.

I work in IT. Network Admin. And the guys I know that code say basically the same thing. I thought about getting into it but the future looks bleak. Maybe I should become a plumber.
- Honestly if young people can get a good union trade job they'd be set for life.
  
  My nephew is early 20s. Union welder. He makes double my salary. I definitely picked the wrong career. Of course his job is much more dangerous than mine.
  
  Tech should unionize

Software is a maintenance role. Once the higher ups find out there is nobody to fix their shit when it breaks the jobs will come back.
- Maybe. And if that happens then I'll go back to encouraging people to get into writing software.

I agree, but for a different reason. Demand for senior/principal engineers is still present, especially for those "third party vendors" you mentioned. But companies are not interested in hiring and training junior devs. They'd rather outsource when long term quality and tight control is not important. Or, for the bigger companies, they'll hire H1-B instead. There are enough senior engineers to be shuffled around for many years now that engineers have reached saturation in many markets.
And it's not that all the software that needs to be created is now present and "good enough". For some industries, that might be valid, but it is definitely not universal. The thing that IS universal is that experienced engineers have become far more productive than they were a decade or two ago because of the large software ecosystem available now. That productivity might outpace what some companies actually can make use of to directly improve revenue or margins compared to their current headcount. (Engineers might still be busy today, but not on things the company considers very valuable.)
I wonder if we will see growth in software consulting or dev agencies as smaller companies find they can do more with less, and only occasionally need more firepower without fully outsourcing.

Every field goes through cycles of boom+bust. Major corporations around the world gambled on the importance of having a strong IT office. Some won and some lost. It sucks to see people losing their jobs but at the same time, "the software we have now is good enough" is a pretty bad take IMO
- I can only speak to my experience. And in my experience I spend far less time writing software than I do fixing old software. When I recommend replacing outdated systems I'm told the existing stuff is good enough.

c/USdefaultism

The stuff that already exists is good enough at what it does that it isn’t worth the investment to make something new. That means fewer devs are needed for writing that software.
Where I work, software gets replaced basially every 7 years. It's almost infuriating. But it pays well.

If you're in the US, you're probably right. After the cancerous growth VC companies dumped the unused software people they hired for no reason other than paper growth, the market showed it's not as desaturated as statistics would make it seem.
On the other hand:
H1-B is a political tool, and I doubt that visa still exists by the end of the year. Plus, the people coming in on H1-B visas are still software developers. They're just from another country.
The software already built is good enough
I have worked at several companies whose terrible, buggy software sold like hot cakes because the competitors were even worse. General consumer software and apps may be pretty saturated, but B2B is an unending race to the bottom, racing for "better than before without being much more expensive".
Destruction of the public sector
Helps not to be American. Or if you are, look for software jobs in defence.
AI is going to change the industry for sure. Lots of dumb framework copy/pasting jobs are going to disappear, but among the mess people with actual knowledge are going to be incredibly valuable.
I do expect programmer careers to start paying out significantly less over the coming times, but mostly if you're used to the ridiculously high wages software development pays in the US.
I've found a new software dev job within biking distance in less than three weeks, after submitting my CV a total of three times. The B2B sector is still growing.
- What's your basis for expecting H1-B to no longer exist? Elon Musk is arguable one of the most powerful people in American politics. His companies rely heavily on H1-B visas. He has recently publicly called for them to be more than doubled
  
  H1-B is a great boon for the American economy and it'd be absolutely idiotic to get rid of it, but the current American government runs on a platform of xenophobia, racism, and plain lies. They're stupid enough to kick out all the illegal residents that harvest the crops and take care of trades, so I don't see why they wouldn't be stupid enough to end the programs that essentially bring in cheap, highly-educated labour into the country.
  I know Elon is profiting massively of H-1B, but that doesn't mean there won't be some kind of special exception for Elon's companies. The current government is also getting rid of electric chargers along federal roads, while at the same time peddling Teslas at the white house.
  As for a source rather than a generic feeling: Project 2025's handbook, basically a step-by-step guide of what the current American leadership is working on, page 150, mentions H-1B reform as a goal:
  H-1B reform. Transform the program into an elite mechanism exclusively to bring in the “best and brightest” at the highest wages while simultaneously ensuring that U.S. workers are not being disadvantaged by the program. H-1B is a means only to supplement the U.S. economy and to keep companies competitive, not to depress U.S. labor markets artificially in certain industries.
  Read to me like they're trying to restrict H-1B to what it was originally intended to be: supplementing highly-educated labour where necessary, rather than allowing tech companies to cheaply import labour from poorer countries. Thing is, the US doesn't need that much extra highly-educated labour in fields like computer science. When I see these people write down "reform", I interpret that as "completely tearing down and replacing whatever was there with a new system".
  
  I that point made no sense in context of what happened after the election where first lady trump tucked his dick on the h1b issue after president musk has spoken.
  Disgusting

Quite the opposite in my experience. Job openings get flooded, but the people that apply just don't have the skills. People from government and big companies seem to have a narrow sliver of experience that doesn't translate well to solving real businesses problems with software, and I include big tech in that as well.

I've thought on and off about being a software developer since I had ideas I wanted to execute for the benefit of myself and others. But, I'm more of a labor type that wants to move around. I can't stand the idea of sitting for hours on end every day, coupled with all of the negatives involved with office culture and what you've listed.

This changes a lot if you have area expertise beyond software. I am seeing a bit of the opposite now - if you have an actual EE or CPE (or even physics or math) degree you are golden. Software as a particular skill is heavily tradeified, like basic IT work was a decade ago.

The exciting shift in Europe is there is now a big push to move off of US tech solutions and to develop EU sovereign software. If it goes the route of open source and interoperability, this could be really exciting compared to US solutions which are locked down and full of spyware. This would create new job opportunities in Europe with a focus on open source.

Well, there should be less people entering the career path at least; especially if they're just doing it for money and not passion. I'm pretty sure most of this stuff is deliberate because the elite were getting afraid of the growing power of their workers (talks of unionizing, demanding their companies be more ethical, etc). Most large corps seem to have given up on innovating, so yeah, less new software is being made, except for whatever is overhyped by investors (AI atm).

The market is cyclic with each boom and bust.
We're experiencing the beginnings of a bust.
Here's a good video on these topics
https://youtu.be/LXUw0xSib-g

36 comments