Industry growth is still at 20%+. There are hundreds of thousands of unfilled tech roles. Hence the high pay and glamorous work place. Even during Covid where all other industries collapsed, tech surged. The world is becoming more technological, not less.
Good developers and computer scientists and architects sure. What we've been seeing for awhile is near zero interest rates allowing for unprecedented monetary expansion. It gets to a point where locking down all available talent is a good business decision so that you aren't left hurting for it when you need to go looking. But with monetary contraction + shareholder obligations, these companies are going to need to shed the less talented and more tangential talent.
I expect to see non-CS people shed. Probably the less apt coders that haven't gotten around to making each mistake twice.
The solid devs and CS/math/stats people will stay and will probably be compensated better. They can keep a company alive when it consolidates back to its mission. They can lead it out when the boom starts. And with some of the chaff gone, its easier for competitors to see and put offers on the prime talent. So there's that. These businesses know that good devs are like good artists and experienced good ones don't exist in anywhere near the numbers people outside the industry think.
Tech surged during COVID because of financial witchery. FAANG wasn't exactly moving mountains with new innovation and disruptors weren't exactly rising up. The cloud was just much better adopted and shareholders jumped on theme while the federal reserve vomited money into the floor of the markets via Blackrock and the Treasury. Bitter insiders were painting the top companies as being even more zombie than they were in 2019.
I would say that comparing this to covid is a mistake. The lockdowns drove more people online and ultimately drove more money into the tech sector. It looked like tech bucked the trend, but it was basically just benefiting from the downturn in other sectors of the economy.
In a recession, spending goes down across the board, and tech is on shakey ground as a lot of the products and services can be viewed as luxuries... or at least optional. When customers stop paying subscriptions, consuming content, or buying the current pretty device, the money flowing into the sector is going to drop. Companies are going to need to start managing costs, and the only way to do that is by managing payroll and product lines.
Bottom line is those hundreds of thousands of job openings are going to start getting yanked while the number of people who can do them is going to increase.
Those who can't be reassigned or are redundant get pink slipped and re-enter the job market. Eventually some MBA will rediscover "outsourcing", and then someone else will come up with a new word for "topgrading" and write a book on it. More competition for less jobs available.
Meta has already started to turtle down, alphabet as well after a terribad quarterly report a few days ago. About to see it from Twitter big time.
It's not the end of the world. Tech workers are still going to have it easier than others in a lot of cases, but I'd expect the salaries to get a littler lower, the perks to dry up, and the process of finding a job to get harder. Will get worse longer the recession lasts.
And if someone's one of the people who's a "project manager" or "community moderator" that likes to say they are a tech worker... they should either be looking into developing high demand skills or thinking about a lateral career change right about now.
By tech worker if you include all the bullshit jobs, sure there will be a lot ot cuts.
Software developers, especially competent ones, will almost never be out of a job and if they are it's for a month or two tops.
I'm a developer and in my industry I get 5+ offers a day for work that pays 150-200k per year not including equity or bonuses. I don't think there is an abundance of good software engineers, there is a massive massive shortage. It is difficult to design complex systems.
Even if all of big tech got laid off there would still be enough jobs to go around and these new companies will end up creating thousands of more jobs. Things are cyclical, once out of the storm the tech sector will be in a golden age.
Industry growth is still at 20%+. There are hundreds of thousands of unfilled tech roles. Hence the high pay and glamorous work place. Even during Covid where all other industries collapsed, tech surged. The world is becoming more technological, not less.
Good developers and computer scientists and architects sure. What we've been seeing for awhile is near zero interest rates allowing for unprecedented monetary expansion. It gets to a point where locking down all available talent is a good business decision so that you aren't left hurting for it when you need to go looking. But with monetary contraction + shareholder obligations, these companies are going to need to shed the less talented and more tangential talent.
I expect to see non-CS people shed. Probably the less apt coders that haven't gotten around to making each mistake twice.
The solid devs and CS/math/stats people will stay and will probably be compensated better. They can keep a company alive when it consolidates back to its mission. They can lead it out when the boom starts. And with some of the chaff gone, its easier for competitors to see and put offers on the prime talent. So there's that. These businesses know that good devs are like good artists and experienced good ones don't exist in anywhere near the numbers people outside the industry think.
Tech surged during COVID because of financial witchery. FAANG wasn't exactly moving mountains with new innovation and disruptors weren't exactly rising up. The cloud was just much better adopted and shareholders jumped on theme while the federal reserve vomited money into the floor of the markets via Blackrock and the Treasury. Bitter insiders were painting the top companies as being even more zombie than they were in 2019.
I would say that comparing this to covid is a mistake. The lockdowns drove more people online and ultimately drove more money into the tech sector. It looked like tech bucked the trend, but it was basically just benefiting from the downturn in other sectors of the economy.
In a recession, spending goes down across the board, and tech is on shakey ground as a lot of the products and services can be viewed as luxuries... or at least optional. When customers stop paying subscriptions, consuming content, or buying the current pretty device, the money flowing into the sector is going to drop. Companies are going to need to start managing costs, and the only way to do that is by managing payroll and product lines.
Bottom line is those hundreds of thousands of job openings are going to start getting yanked while the number of people who can do them is going to increase. Those who can't be reassigned or are redundant get pink slipped and re-enter the job market. Eventually some MBA will rediscover "outsourcing", and then someone else will come up with a new word for "topgrading" and write a book on it. More competition for less jobs available.
Meta has already started to turtle down, alphabet as well after a terribad quarterly report a few days ago. About to see it from Twitter big time.
It's not the end of the world. Tech workers are still going to have it easier than others in a lot of cases, but I'd expect the salaries to get a littler lower, the perks to dry up, and the process of finding a job to get harder. Will get worse longer the recession lasts.
And if someone's one of the people who's a "project manager" or "community moderator" that likes to say they are a tech worker... they should either be looking into developing high demand skills or thinking about a lateral career change right about now.
By tech worker if you include all the bullshit jobs, sure there will be a lot ot cuts.
Software developers, especially competent ones, will almost never be out of a job and if they are it's for a month or two tops.
I'm a developer and in my industry I get 5+ offers a day for work that pays 150-200k per year not including equity or bonuses. I don't think there is an abundance of good software engineers, there is a massive massive shortage. It is difficult to design complex systems.
Even if all of big tech got laid off there would still be enough jobs to go around and these new companies will end up creating thousands of more jobs. Things are cyclical, once out of the storm the tech sector will be in a golden age.