A ‘demoralizing' trend has computer science grads out of work — even minimum wage jobs. Are 6-figure tech careers over?
Submitted 5 weeks ago by chobeat@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
roscoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
That was from December of '21. It would be $15.69 now.
titanicx@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
Another thread put it at 16.14 an hour.
Ross_audio@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I’m not sure that works. There were 20 shillings to the pound.
So £0.75 a week.
This inflation calculator:
www.bankofengland.co.uk/…/inflation-calculator
£75 in 1843 is equivalent to £8,310.96
So 15s then is equivalent to £83.11 a week, £4321.72 a year.
40 hour week (which is implied to be too low). ~£2.08 an hour
So if he worked over 40 hours you’re talking a sub £2/hour wage. Around $2.70 in US money.
I suspect the stat relies on converting to dollars before applying inflation as GBP to USD was about 1 to 5 then instead of about 1 to 1.33
It’s fun but I wouldn’t want to denigrate Dickens by saying he got poverty wrong to make a political point.
finalarbiter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
It’s fun but I wouldn’t want to denigrate Dickens by saying he got poverty wrong to make a political point.
I think they’re actually making the opposite claim- American wages are just that fucked, rather than Dickens being wrong
Taldan@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
While the idea behind AI was that it would automate manual tasks and help workers focus on more value-added activities, some workers fear it will outright replace them — and that’s already happening
Yeah, it already happened to the journalist that would have written this article. I find it a bit funny that the picture caption is just the prompt they used to generate it
python@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
oh no, that em dash…
shoe@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
I use the em dash constantly, and have done for years, so finding out it’s a big “this was written by AI” indicator makes me sad — I’m not an AI user, I just like the way it looks!
Brumefey@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
First it was funny, then sad…
Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Two decades of “just learn to code bro”, will do that to a profession.
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
The industry has brought in a ton of soulless goons and uninterested/stupid workers for a decade and it’s destroyed the industry.
I’m not saying there aren’t good people, but I have interviewed hundreds of people over 10+ years for jobs in tech, and the quality bar dropped a lot.
This started well before AI. I met people from Apple/Amazon/Google/etc. who functionally could not do their job, contributed nothing to projects, and were highly paid. Only a few big companies were the exception.
I’ve met a ton of people with phds and advanced degrees from prestigious schools that were total crap too.
We shovelled so many people into the system because the jobs sounded amazing and they’d pay stupid prices for a degree. We fully industrialized low performance hiring, so yeah, no surprise packages are dropping.
Plus, I used to get time to teach interns and new grads too. The staff we taught grew into way better workers than the job hoppers with 6 jobs at fancy companies over 3 years who had never implied a real project beyond the shiny prototype.
The last 3-4 years I had been constantly threatened about looming layoffs, and that we needed to meet targets at all costs. I’ve been perennially told “if we’re just heads down and all out until [6 months from now/project completion] it’ll all be good again”. Only for the cycle to repeat again and again and again.
The big tech machine destroyed my mental health and I’m out, and I’m much much happier and healthier. I still work in tech, but I’m incredibly selective about the jobs I take, and I’ll never work in corporate tech again.
turkalino@lemmy.yachts 5 weeks ago
I still work in tech, but I’m incredibly selective about the jobs I take, and I’ll never work in corporate tech again
What exactly do you mean by this? I’ve also wanted to get out of tech but have zero experience in anything else so idk what to do
breakfastburrito@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Biotech is also awful rn
wewbull@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
6 figure jobs are still common, but not at the entry level. The companies that used to offer such thing are taking that money and investing in AI, thinking that they won’t need new blood.
They’re wrong, but that’s what’s happening.
neukenindekeuken@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
This is bang on.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Yup. We pay six figs (not high six figs, but still double the local median wage) for decent talent. We don’t pay top salaries for our area, but we are about median for a comparable role. The problem is people seem to expect the top roles straight out of college, when they’re really junior level, if they’re competent at all.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 5 weeks ago
Do you hire remotely too or only in-office? Even low six figures is high for me and I have 6 YoE. Joy of living in Europe.
invertedspear@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
It’s not just grads. I have 1 open senior position, 100 applicants. A good 10% of them with 15+ years of experience have had no job in the last year, or have things like “Amazon fulfillment center” as their most recent job. Shits rough if you find yourself laid off or if the company you’re working for went out of business.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
I know a guy with three degrees and decades of experience on a resume littered with well-known companies and astounding projects.
2.5 years out of work.
This is the guy who should be fixing slopper code and he’s working volunteers and startups so his resume isn’t toxic from an Uber or Amazon gig.
stoly@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
This has why I’m happy to work in public service. It’s very stable but the salaries aren’t as high.
sobchak@programming.dev 5 weeks ago
Didn’t something like 150k employees and contractors get DOGE’d and the admin is targeting 300k by the end of year?
I was doing contract work related to environmental research that relied on grant money and all that dried up.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
On the flipside, we had a senior position open for something like 2 years before we finally got someone we’re happy with. We fired two before we found someone would would actually do work and not cuss out our external partners.
We’re still having trouble hiring mid-levels. Most of the candidates are surprised when we ask them questions about React when the job position clearly states it’s for React, and they’re also surprised when we ask them to write a few lines of code in an interview (nothing crazy, should take a competent dev 5-10 min, and a nervous one 15, so we allocate 20 min). I don’t think our expectations are unreasonable, here’s how we delineate between tiers:
- junior - needs help from a mentor to deliver feature work
- mid-level - needs direction on larger features, but can deliver independently
- senior - manages larger features, consults w/ architect on high-level design considerations
But all the senior applicants are mid-level at best, mid-level applicants are recent college grads, and junior applicants just finished a coding bootcamp and think they’re hot stuff because they built a rails app by following step-by-step instructions.
We’re not a flashy tech company, we manufacture niche products for a niche field, and our software does simulations and reports. It’s a complicated product, and we’re totally willing to train people, we just want people who can demonstrate that they can ask proper questions and translate that into easy to understand code. The interview questions aren’t hard, but they are intentionally incomplete because we’re not testing coding ability but instead the ability to recognize vagueness and ask clarifying questions (i.e. ask before you assume).
We’re not anyone’s top pick, but we do have a lot of interesting problems to solve and people tend to really like it here. So the candidates we tend to get are desperate people who aren’t getting bites at the flashier companies, which often means they’re not all that competent. During COVID, we’d get maybe 5 applicants for a role after it has been open for a month, and now we’re getting 200-300 in the first few days of the position being open. A lot of those applicants are incompetent and I’m surprised they were offered their previous role, but there are some diamonds in the rough.
invertedspear@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
I feel you on a lot of that. Big FAANG and Covid lockdowns changed the landscape hard in the favor of the inexperienced. In late 2020, I had a junior position to fill with a 90k salary. The guy that has accepted called me back a few days later to inform me Disney+ just offered him 220k. I couldn’t even be mad he was taking their offer after he had already accepted mine. I’m sure a lot of that resulted in incompetent people with higher paying jobs and titles than they deserved. Note that it’s setting the other way, well, no one can afford to take a pay cut, so they’re of course applying to jobs they don’t qualify for. My current role clearly says PHP, but I’ve dumped maybe 10% of the candidates already for not even having the term PHP on their resume.
HubertManne@piefed.social 5 weeks ago
Did I apply to your position as that sounds like me. Just passed the one year point.
qarbone@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I’ve been out of tech work for near as long as I have career experience.
Each day feels another nail in the coffin of those 6 years of education.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Maybe if people hadn’t pushed everyone in the entire fucking world into my field we wouldn’t have this problem
Jankatarch@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Do you mean to tell me it wasn’t a quick get-rich scheme and people who aren’t interested in the field will have issues after doing math puzzles 8 hours a day in front of a monitor before going home to do more on github?
But the rich non-programmer guy told me so!
Blackmist@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
Maybe if the field hadn’t pushed everyone else out of business…
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Skill issue /s
TronBronson@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Yea bro that’s what they do. See you making a living wage, then flood the labor pool. Welcome back to the barrel Mon crab
HubertManne@piefed.social 5 weeks ago
So old man time. In the early nineties things did not look great. Almost any college degree was not bringing in a salary one could like think about having a family with. Then came the late nineties and dot com and tech jobs were like the only thing that paid to possibly have what was, in many peoples mind, the typical middle class life. You know own your own home thing eventually. Since then its been tech or bust and now tech is bust and there is no go to field for people to run to.
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Homeowning and paying a mortgage, especially now, is the single most important thing maintaining my quality of life.
A neighbor recently sold and it is now a rental. Paying that rent would effectively raise my housing costs about $20k a year.
It’s almost exactly the same house and lot. It’s insane.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Have you done the math on it though? Yeah, a mortgage stays constant, but to get a mortgage, you need a down payment, closing costs, and whatever you’re paying your real estate agent. And then there’s maintenance costs, utilities (most purchasable homes are larger than what you’d otherwise rent), probably extra costs to get around, etc.
If you instead took that down-payment and additional costs and invested it in a diversified stock portfolio, how would they compare?
I’m in a similar boat where my mortgage is now less than half of what rent would be, but my house is growing in value far slower than stocks. Here’s a nerdy video discussing rent vs buy, and the result is that it’s more of a wash than most people assume. This is extra true if you properly account for repair costs (i.e. if you DIY, what’s the value of your time?). The decision to rent vs buy is far less consequential in terms of long-term financial impact than most people assume.
HubertManne@piefed.social 5 weeks ago
Is it fixed? although interest rates are likely to go down so even a non fixed is helpful currently.
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
I honestly think this is a lie because it’s because people are mainly going for SWE or Game Dev. But literally everything else in the computer bubble is still doing fine
absentbird@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
To some extent, yeah. I work in web development and there’s no shortage of opportunities for someone good at reactive front end development and JSON APIs. But I think there is a shortage of grads who have the necessary skills.
I’ve been trying to grow my business, and it’s frankly depressing how many people graduate with computer science degrees without learning the basics of the field, the volume of vibe coders is too damn high.
HubertManne@piefed.social 5 weeks ago
I find the jobs are super picky. Had one with a laundry list except for one job scheduling software and I had experience in the one they wanted but the feedback I got back was that the other one was real important even though I had the other and everything else. So I had experience with job scheduling software in general. including one they used. but not the other. and in that laundry list is software way more complicated than job scheduling. Through most of my career having about half of what they wanted was fine and they got that picking up the rest was not going to be a big deal for anyone who had experience in the field.
jaybone@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
Tech is kind of all based around SWE though. What are these other roles you are referring to?
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks ago
The government should give the people jobs, or money if it fails to provide meaningful jobs.
HubertManne@piefed.social 5 weeks ago
this gets me about the bs work reqs. They should give you a place to go to meet the req then (lets be clear the req itself is stupid) if you can’t find a job. It literally makes no sense. Can’t find a job so I need help. Can’t help unless you work a job ????
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks ago
i would argue that it’s not so much the rich that are at fault here, but the politicians who are unwilling to implement taxes on the rich.
mctoasterson@reddthat.com 5 weeks ago
The secret of the CS and IT job is that it has always been the Neuveaux Blue Collar job.
For every IT exec and formerly-technical middle-management douchebag making really good money, there are 2 to 10 actually technical resources making “okay” money relative to their skill and the insane hours and scenarios they are expected to work.
Oh and let’s not forget they’re constantly trying to outsource as much of that support and engineering talent as possible.
CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks ago
And that is why we need unions in tech. Tech is a cost center for most companies. It’s a space to beat down as much as possible to get margins up, just the same as the guys working on the line making the thing.
thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org 5 weeks ago
I am in tech, I am in a union. Its fucking great!
Deflated0ne@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
If your job can be automated. Your job will be automated. Even if the work it produces is hot runny shit.
They would rather pump out pure garbage than pay an honest wage for honest work. It doesn’t even have to work. They’ll just put an arbitration clause in the EULA. Then sit back and count their money.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks ago
That’s not how companies work. The CEO has a fiduciary duty to maximize company gains, so they have to invest in AI, because it’s more profitable. They don’t even have a choice, if they want to keep their job.
The current crisis has nothing to do with the individual decisions of a single CEO. It’s a legal issue, i.e. CEOs could only act differently if there was a significant and serious change in the way that the law requires them to operate. Which, all things considered, is unreasonable in this case.
Deflated0ne@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
They wouldn’t act differently. Watch 1 hour of CNBC. Those people only technically qualify as human.
HootinNHollerin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
Tech is much more than programming / software
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 5 weeks ago
No. ::: spoliler spoiler They would like it to be. We’re really expensive because they can’t do it. As soon as all shit hits the fan guess who starts earning more. :::
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks ago
What matters isn’t whether you think that AI can replace you. What matters is whether the CEO thinks that AI can replace you.
Novocirab@feddit.org 5 weeks ago
Relevant Doctorow post: The enshittification of tech jobs (27 Apr 2025)
qaz@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Does anyone from Europe recognize this? Because it isn’t what I’m seeing.
biotin7@sopuli.xyz 5 weeks ago
Maybe we should start with kicking out the non-nerds ??
passepartout@feddit.org 5 weeks ago
Says / asks an article published in a media spin-off created by a big fintech company, which has been funded by, among others, Peter Thiel.
Yes, the tech sector is in a harsh condition, but we will go on. Don’t let the AI hype / lay off waves for an overhired tech workforce from covid break your minds. There will be a need for smart people building and maintaining ecosystems, as long as a rising tech oligarchy won’t gatekeep us all out, which should be the headline here.
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
Of course it is. Your employer will replace you with an immigrant or AI as soon as they can, that’s how capitalism works.
dan69@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I’m sorry no software engineer right out of college should be getting paid 100k plus. You have <1 yr of professional experience. Okay I’ll give your inter/“extern”-ship and land you a whopping 50k - 60k… it is and was overly inflated wages…
ReCursing@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
I graduated in 2002, just as the dot com bubble burst. Similar scary headlines abounded then. I’m not employed in it, but I don’t recall the tech sector disappearing and us all going to live in caves. Maybe I missed it?
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
No, but yes too.
dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Yeah you can’t JUST do CS anymore. Why would you hire a CS grad to do your project when you have to plan it to the end and provide rigid specifications to follow? Instead you can hire an engineer or someone from stat or data analytics that ALSO comes with a boatload of programming (and often software architecting) expertise?
It only makes sense to hire someone with a CS specialty if the problem your company solves specifically calls for that specialty. That’s is getting increasingly rare in the age of SaaS, containerization, IaaS, etc.
Runaway@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
Recent data analytics masters degree grad trying to do a career pivot. After almost a year, man does it seem like 2 years ago me made a dumb ass choice
W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
I don’t like my job so I went back to school for tech. Not for the salary, but because I genuinely enjoy it. After 8 months of applying, I got 1 phone interview.
The job I hate went fully remote around that time and I just gave up entirely. I’ll just keep doing a job I hate but at least I can work at home.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 weeks ago
CS jobs have been scanrt for the past 10years, biotech similarly have the same issues as well.(biotech research, but not people who for bio>health)
4am@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
Do project managers and vision directors next
stoly@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Ultimately the problem is an over saturated market and universities letting their programs grow too large.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 5 weeks ago
Probably.
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One of the two major employers of programmers, tech companies, have significantly curtailed future development of their products as the cost/benefit ratio isn’t worth it. That isn’t projected to change in the near future.
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Companies that have full WFH are no longer constrained by office location in hunting for talent. A Bay Area programmer now has to compete with someone in Tulsa or Mexico City, which have far lower costs of living.
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AI slop will probably get good enough to do basic tasks. So, companies who only need a little programming talent may be able to get by on shitty AI code instead of hiring a second or third developer.
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inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Hey look, it’s the late 90’ and early 2000’s again.
Same crap that was talked about after the .com bust.
calliope@retrolemmy.com 5 weeks ago
The first sentence of the article shows the problem.
I worked in tech for a long time, at a bunch of different companies, and I never once worked anywhere that there was a glut of jobs and “not enough bodies” to fill them.
The problem wasn’t ever “bodies,” which people have always misunderstood. It’s qualified workers.
The people going into these careers includes a large number of people who want the money but aren’t qualified do what we’re looking for.
empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
Its more than that; companies also continuously propagate the message of “shortage of workers” while continuing to raise the requirements for entry level positions more and more. It reaches a point where “entry level” is not attainable for most fresh grads to get experience, and keeps their starting wages (and continuing wages) very well depressed due to the high supply.
Its a very targeted campaign to make sure educated workers don’t get too many ideas of independence in their heads.
SupraMario@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
It’s a bit more nuanced than that. A lot of college grads I’ve interviewed come out expecting to be senior level when they don’t even have a basic foundation of IT. Don’t expect to get paid 6 figures right out of college when you have 0 experience and can’t even provide basic answers to questions that help desk people know. Colleges have lied to them that we(the IT industry) needs them and that they’re special. Show me you have the foundation before telling me how the industry works.
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
I knew of a company that listed an internal tool as a job requirement so they could claim a skill shortage and hire foreign workers. They coached them to put that tool on their resume.
QuarterSwede@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
It doesn’t help that conpanies lie on their requirements in job postings. Even entry level retail jobs are asking for 2-3 years of retail experience. That’s just insulting to those with retail experience and an impossible “entry level” requirement. Leads people to just ignore any requirements.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
It’s not just that. HR departments (who, let’s be honest, were never exactly super-clear on what tech roles are or do because they’re busy with everything else) have been infected by AI to the point that no one can just see a job and apply for it unless they rearrange everything in the resume to match the job posting verbiage exactly.
Everyone who makes it past that hurdle are sorted lowest-to-highest salary requirements. Oh you have seventeen years experience? Fuck you. Everyone after that is sorted by age/race/ whatever. It’s the perfect system for fucking up tech hiring.
Unless you rebrand everything you do as AI. Then you’ll get 100 million dollars from Zuckabug. (It used to be “cloud” but that was a long time ago now). So the tech manager who knows what they’re looking for gets a bunch of applications from newbies who talk like AI is everything and they don’t want that.
It’s super fucked.
Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
How much is it that these companies don’t want to train. I have a time believing your job is so advanced and technical you couldn’t find someone qualified at any point.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
Training people up would be a great idea when you have the attitude that you’re going to keep working there for 30 years. Those old “company man” jobs are all but gone. If you stay at a job 5 years, people start to wonder if there’s something wrong with you. That’s just starting to be enough time for training to be worth the investment.
If tech was unionized, and the union had the attitude that they are basically a trade guild that will build up your skills, that would change things.
the_wise_wolf@feddit.org 5 weeks ago
In my experience there is a huge gap between those that are smart and enthusiastic and those that are just average. I consider myself part of the former group and I can’t blame coworkers for just doing their job and go home. But it means the gap just widens.
ratten@lemmings.world 5 weeks ago
Sounds like these businesses should be training their employees instead of expecting the employees to train themselves.
College is a great scam because it puts the onus of training onto the worker, not the business. And like good useful idiots, the average person feels pride in being taken advantage of in this way.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 5 weeks ago
One issue is that you can’t just take a person and train them. Not everyone will excel, so you want proven people instead of playing the lottery. It’s great because now only senior engineers get hired and nobody trains more of them, increasing the shortage so now they want to stay importing them.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
And this is why I’m not worried about my job, but I do recommend people stay away unless they really like it. I’ve interviewed far too many people who just can’t hack it, yet they have multiple relevant jobs on their resume.
Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I have. My first job wasn’t the worst at this but it happened to some extent. My last company had such a huge disparity between work and employees that every single one of their IT projects (dunno about the rest) was in constant state of delays, hotfixing and putting out fires. Things were so bad people were moved between projects on daily basis and at one point management decided to throw everyone in the department (including folks who just joined the company and newbies with little to no programming experience) to triage one of them.
That’s not to mention poaching team members from projects they promised more bodies to (only informing the client about the latter decision) and many other issues. They absolutely needed more people but the way the company is run does little to help with that.
The worst party? They’re still growing as a company while their burnout rate stays unchanged. So yeah, it’s a thing.
cole@lemdro.id 5 weeks ago
This is SO true. I’m hiring for a software engineer position right now. We’ve been looking for MONTHS. Recently, we’ve finally managed to fill the first head.
So many applicants just can’t even code. My company is not a place where you learn how to code, it’s a place where you learn all the stuff which you didn’t think you’d have to do as a software engineer.
We still have a qualified applicants shortage.
calliope@retrolemmy.com 5 weeks ago
This to me is actually the “secret” of software engineering: it’s frequently doing the stuff you didn’t think you’d have to do as a software engineer.
The hard part is often finding someone who can do both while also wanting to work at your company.
Valmond@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Job shortage? Or too low pay?