Coding skills are almost always valuable even if you’re not coding directly. Depending on what you’re good at/interested in, I’d recommend data analysis (everyone has data! Gotta look at it somehow), database management, engineering roles other than just software engineering, IT, etc. Might not pay exactly as well as a big coding job out the gate, but it’ll certainly be interesting if you like coding.
Comment on Thousands of Software Engineers Say the Job Market Is Getting Much Worse
Nommer@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I’ve spent the last 18 months learning how to program so I could get a job that doesn’t make me want to kill myself, not being ironic, and now this bullshit. Am I just forever doomed to be miserable and just not enjoy anything or have a single break in life?
growsomethinggood@reddthat.com 8 months ago
AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Not if you unionize
Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Don’t dispair. Deep and wide skillsets are always valuable. Continue to build your skills and specialize in areas that your peers don’t.
Target your region too if you aren’t fully remote. Different parts of the country have different trends for tech that is in demand. For instance, I work in IT, and the state that I am in for some reason is by and large Microsoft tech stacks, (no I’m not in Washington.) So .NET and C# devs are in high demand here, as are IT people who have experience scripting with Powershell and developing/administrating in Azure environments. But other areas will be more AWS or Google-centric, or even other stuff.
Identify the trends, figure out what people are looking for and what isn’t being met as a need, then train in that.
FrayDabson@programming.dev 8 months ago
I work as an “API Consultant” but I do a lot of coding and there’s room to move into an engineer role in the future. So there’s still stuff out there.
HipHoboHarold@lemmy.world 8 months ago
My brother was going to school for pharmacy work, but ended up hating it. He mostly was in it because he got thrown into the pharmacy at Walgreens, and they were paying for his schooling.
So he switched over probably about the same time.
I’m thinking maybe he should have just stuck with the free school.
ademir@lemmy.eco.br 8 months ago
Same for me
xtr0n@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Downturns happen. They don’t last forever. There is a lot of pressure from businesses to depress wages and get more work out of software engineers and IT and etc., since we’re one of the few classes of workers who actually get paid. But thinking that developers will be replaced by AI anytime soon is wishful thinking on the part of the bosses. 20 years ago it was how we’d all get replaced by dirt cheap engineers overseas. Well, I’m still waiting on that to happen. If the MBAs could clearly and unambiguously articulate exactly what needs to be implemented, then maybe it would work. But if they can’t do that when we’re all in a conference room together then they’re sure as shit not doing it over email with a 12 hour time difference.
Keep your head up and keep trying to get an entry level gig somewhere. It doesn’t have to be Google or some hotshot startup or even a tech company. Doing IT or websites for an insurance company is still good experience.
Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world 8 months ago
LOL if only… If this happened, we’d need half as many engineers, even without AI. It feels like a third of my work hours are dedicated to figuring out what the fuck they actually want, and half of them are dedicated to building the wrong thing because they change their mind or didn’t say something.
Shit makes me feel like I should go into management but you could not pay me enough to sit around and talk to these people for 8 hours a day.
Sure, AI would solve some problems if people could actually ask the right questions. But engineers are already being paid to be those translators on their own since companies cannot find any other way to solve this problem.
sigmund@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yup. My boss is an engineer by training and I would not take his job, even if it got me the extra $50k per year he makes
sigmund@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Hell, even project managers who used to be engineers have trouble figuring out what they need. The reason engineers/general technical folk are valuable is because their job is to pick through the guesswork laid by management and formulate an actual working thing, regardless of whether it’s a physical object or a button on a website.
Current language learning model AI has no chance of you can’t actually formulate what you really need.
I can make AI write code for me, but actually knowing what I need it to write is more than half the battle