Edit: I should have explained my reasoning. They have a much smaller eligible applicant pool - US citizens who are eligible for security clearance. Because of this they’re continuously looking for good talent.

There's an entire generation in this country that thinks the US is safe, a villain even. How wrong they are, and how much they stand to lose if the US loses.

Anyone that gets into defense because of this thread, remember that the technologies you develop will be used to slaughter the innocent.

I'd be happier to know that my code would let a shaped charge target a J20 cockpit in the unlikely event of Really Bad Decision Making, than to know that it was targeting teenage girls with contagious mental illness.

On the other hand, I can give you plenty of reasons not to work in defense. They don't pay enough for you to ever own a house in a desirable place; security clearances are an invasive relic of the J. Edgar Hoover days (and your sensitive data will get hacked by China anyway); it's assumed that you don't know "foreign persons" (hint: This is actually now a mark of the lower-class and uneducated.); a software engineer without an advanced degree is basically nobody; cloud stuff is mostly off limits; work may happen in windowless rooms; perks are non-existent; and it's embarrassing to answer "so what do you do for a living" if you're trying to exist in blue-state society.

But ethics? Compared to FAANG? I wouldn't worry about that.

I know plenty of people who took pay cuts to work in cleared jobs at Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. If you're talented, you can make a lot in the defense and intelligence community.

> and your sensitive data will get hacked by China anyway

Hacked? No. Most sensitive data is kept on air-gapped networks. Not really hackable. Can be exfiltrated, sure, but that's part of the point of the extensive background checks.

> it's assumed that you don't know "foreign persons" (hint: This is actually now a mark of the lower-class and uneducated.)

Not even remotely true. You do have to report contacts you know to be non-US citizens, but that's not disqualifying. I knew someone who filled out over 200 pages of foreign contact forms, and still obtained TS/SCI clearance.

> a software engineer without an advanced degree is basically nobody

Not accurate. Most people I knew in the cleared space didn't even have computer science degrees; most of us had bachelor's degrees in unrelated subjects, many even non-STEM (several history/English degrees).

> cloud stuff is mostly off limits

Somewhat true, but surely you're aware of AWS and Azure building out substantial private clouds for intelligence and defense customers?

> work may happen in windowless rooms

Rarely. Most SCIFs have windows, in my experience.

> perks are non-existent

Depends on the employer. But sure.

> and it's embarrassing to answer "so what do you do for a living" if you're trying to exist in blue-state society.

I did cleared work in Seattle. I don't think I've ever voted Republican. I've voted Green on a number of occasions. Same story for most of my coworkers. The most left-leaning people I know never had an issue with my job.

I think there are two ways of thinking about this: First, your presence there means someone more conservative isn't there, and you can maybe effect some small change. Second, any job at a sufficiently large corporation is ultimately killing people, even if indirectly; there's no way you can work to enrich billionaires at the expense of the working class and feel like you're contributing to the net good of society unless you're engaging in some serious cognitive dissonance. At least, IMO.

Caught myself clicking upvote 100500 times. Index finger hurts

It's not insult if it's verifiably true, is it?

There are plenty of people that are okay with their work being used to kill babies. They can work defense jobs. I just wanted to provide a little reality check for downtrodden devs considering defense work for the first time, because I'm sure a lot of them in fact are not okay with their work being used to kill babies.

You are being incredibly uncharitable, bordering on dishonesty. Cars kill babies every year too but it’s not why people get into the automobile industry.

And this isn’t the “reality check” own that you think it is. It’s actually very condescending, and reductionist. You have not even attempted to refute the idea that a defense industry is necessary to maintain peace.

No, I want people that aren't baby-killers to avoid it. That's all. The defense industry is important and needs staff, staff that are OK with babies being killed.

It's starting to sound like you're a baby-killing defense industry employee, and if you are I want you to understand that I don't hate you. I just dislike drone strikes against children and hospitals.

Couldn’t be further from the truth. No defense, no finance is the promise I made to myself when I started my career.

My point is that you are insulting the intelligence of people both in and out of the field with toxic, pithy remarks like that. It serves no purpose but to agitate.

I’m gonna reflect really hard on this

I totally agree. One should think carefully before helping to arm a nation or its people. It's a weighty decision.

I wish the answer was as straight-forward as armament is bad, pacifism is good. Unfortunately, AFAIK unarmed nations don't last very long.

Everyone in the community, us kids included, considered this to be serious and vital work for defending the US from the USSR, an adversary who's brutality has been revealed for the umpteenth time in the Ukraine attack. I, for one, would like to see the US strive to actually live up to our stated ideals. Unfortunately, Reagan showed the neocons all you have to do is act like you care about your ideals.

WRT your link - that video was obtained via a FOIA request. Do you think Putin would allow such a video to be released? Yeah, we're not perfect but at least we're still allowed to talk about the bad things we do, openly gripe about our government, and demand more accountability. THAT is something for which US citizens can still be envied.

Yes, because the US had one of the most effective propaganda machines of all times.

You know, participants of a war always believe their side is right and they’re fighting the good fight. Otherwise they wouldn’t do it. And while you’re certainly right that Putin shouldn’t be considered harmless, a victim or even an opponent with equally valid interests, it’s still naive to think the US is just defending against the Putins in the world.

That's how I see the United States and the old USSR, modern Russia and to a lesser extent, China (I tend to view China much more favorably than Russia). Does that mean the U.S. is perfect? Nope, we're not. Sometimes we're wrong and disastrously so. Does that mean every Russian is bad? Nope, I've worked alongside many awesome Russians over the decades. Some were even in the Russian Army at the same time I was in the Marine Corps and we've laughed that here we are now in a bar having a beer together whereas a few years before we would have been on a battlefield trying to kill one another.

In that regard I see Putin and Trump very similarly. Putin has reminded us that Russia hasn't advanced as much as we'd thought, and Trump showed us that our lesser selves were always there under the surface brewing and waiting for a monster such as him to release our demons and let them run amok. They're old-school people from whom the reigns of power should be taken away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley#History

But while I draw my moral.line at small arms (those have the nasty habbit of ending everywhere, and the likes of Heckler and Koch have their long list of export scandals), others draw their line at weapons in general. Both view points are fine, as is working for the likes of SIG Sauer.

Said nobody with any common sense, ever. Palanthir or Meta are in my eyes as bad on CV as… as… wait is there a way I don’t go Godwin’s in this thread?

If our service goes down, civilization goes down. We can't afford to hire people who've spent a career playing games.

To those of us with work visas, this is like saying, "if you're homeless, just go to your vacation home," and then being surprised that people without vacation homes express feelings of despair.

I think the commenter's helpful suggestion has an implied "Unfortunately, this doesn't help everyone, but..." In an attempt to help the people it can help.

For people currently in certain especially difficult or unfair situations, it might hurt less to know that people are sympathetic, though they might feel powerless to help right now.

Knowing that, maybe some of the people getting the short end of the stick would prefer not to have that constantly articulated. I can only guess at when is the right time to articulate, and when to leave it implied.

Thanks for the hint anyway - perhaps someone else will benefit.

Needless to say, the pay at non-tech companies is substantially lower than FAANG and FAANG-tier tech companies. I quadrupled my TC going from the finance industry to my current company - and finance is known to pay above average for a non-tech company. I would say the junior SWEs with <5yoe at my current company make at least as much as the staff SWE equivalents (10+ to multiple decades yoe) at my previous company (bank).

But money aside:

- The onerous bureacracy.

- General lack of respect for tech employees (you're the cost center).

- Dull/depressing office (assuming you're not WFH).

- My colleagues at the non-tech companies I've worked for were nice, great, people. I keep in touch with many of them. But objectively speaking I would say the overall technical caliber is noticeably lower than that of my current colleagues at the FAANG-tier company. For what it's worth, most of my colleagues at the non-tech companies that I felt were great technically...eventually also jumped ship for tech companies.

The process itself was unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. I've always been very targeted in applications, so prior to this the largest number of jobs I applied to in a job search was 5, and the grand total of job applications to date that didn't result in a phone screen was 2 or 3.

This time around, I was looking for a management gig, and sent about 54 applications. Due to a combination of being very targeted and being a little early in the layoff cycle (early fall last year), I managed to get about 10 cases of actually talking to a recruiter, 4 speaking with the hiring manager, 2 going through the full process, and 1 offer. I did also have another 10 recruiter conversations through my own network of recruiters and inbound LinkedIn requests.

A not-so-fun fact is that all but one large-company recruiter I talked this has since been laid off. One of those companies laid off the first recruiter I was talking to, and then laid off the second a couple weeks later.

So 9 out of 10 were laid off? That's pretty shocking and dire if so...

~15 YOE (FB/Meta most recently), ramping up a search after a sabbatical, targeted job search to roles where I have non-trivial experience and domain expertise, customized cover letters, leveraging my network, open to relocation, open to hybrid or remote, etc.

I'm seeing 3-5% response rate over the past few months. It's rough out there. No response for seemingly great matches. Slow moving recruiting process, even at early-stage startups. Rejections after screenings and first round interviews where the mutual fit seemed excellent.

Hiring manager friends and talkative recruiters tell me that in contrast to the past decade where they'd routinely screen people who met most of what they're looking for, they're now dealing with a massive volume of very qualified applicants (and trudging through a massive volume of unqualified applicants). Deciding who to screen and who to do a first round of interviews with is taking a lot more time and effort. And the first round of interviews might include 6-8 unicorn (i.e. perfect) candidates, where in the past they'd be elated to find 1 unicorn.

I've been through a couple down cycles, so I'm focused on grinding away till I find something. I think every level is feeling the pain in some proportional way. Big sympathy for early career folks. Even if we reset compensation expectations, it'd be a shame if the sector ends up losing out permanently on a range of talent. There's no way tech needs are going to decrease on a medium-term horizon (though they may shift).

From a recruiter's perspective, this can be a red flag because they know how much you are worth, and the fact that you worked successfully there means you can probably return. So they might not want to hire you thinking "this guy can leave us for Meta/Google any day".

> ETA: A few of the recruiters I have talked with have mentioned that they’re getting hundreds of applications within hours of a posting going live. So there is likely a “lost in volume” effect as another commenter mentioned.

The real question is what's the signal to noise ratio?

Getting 500 resume for a job posting is not really a new thing for any in-demand, remote friendly company in the bay area. From experience, most applicants on these postings are underqualified (it's free to apply).

I think a good example of this is on LinkedIn. I see "Over 200 Applicants" and "See how you compare to 421 applicants" on their Easy Apply job postings.

Did the same. Boy do I feel dumb now.

Most jobs themselves do not appear to have become much more attractive since last time, to say the least, and on top of that, it seems they've turned recruitment into some kind of hunger games competition.

I think in general the level of trust and loyalty workers are going to be willing to give will be much reduced, let's say, so I think this little game, and I do think it's game rather than necessity, is going to cost them in the long run.

“ Com­pet­ing with thou­sands of other work­ers for po­si­tions he sus­pected might not ac­tu­ally get filled or get­ting a low­ball of­fer didn’t ap­peal, so Mr. Moyni­han has in­stead been lever­ag­ing his strate­gic part­ner­ship skills to help clients on a project ba­sis at a rate of $300 an hour.

“It’s a cau­tion­ary tale for the ti­tans be­cause I do think amaz­ing tal­ent is be­ing dis­persed into smaller tech com­pa­nies that even­tu­ally end up com­pet­ing,” he said.“

I'm a good 3-5yr, mid-level dev, without FAANG company experience.

isn't it the opposite?. All I see is doom and gloom in the news.

Probably the reason. Most companies need people with experience in more than just one layer of a stack. Hard times for those who cant own a full stack, unfortunately.

It’s proving hard to sell generalist-ness to recruiters this round. They often lock on to the most recent specific domain I worked in. If anything, they seem to be filtering for people with very specific experience in a specific layer of a specific stacks - because they are getting so many applications, they can be very choosy.

If you can, look at new jobs/companies as opportunities to get deep experience in a new area since over time, stuff you're good at now will sometimes go away.

And cover letters are really good for this sort of thing as it lets you lay out some specifics that make you the type of person who can really help them out.

I realise this sounds basic, but that's the point: almost all of those things are everywhere. Bury yourself in a tiny slice of one of those things and you've become un-or-over qualified for most of the market.

My self esteem and confidence is at an all time low. It is soul-crushing to have had a brilliant career and get barely 1% response rate. I can't only blame it on my CV being terrible (went through half a dozen iterations already)

You can’t take things personally, focus on the process and just understand that things are outside of your control. You’ll get bites eventually but it’s a slog.

The problem though is assuming that the majority of jobs are with small companies. Although 99% of US businesses are SMBs, only 45% of employees in the US (from quick Google checks) work for SMBs. So the majority of jobs are at large companies and I don't think FAANG would be so much a penalty (except for that you might have compensation expectations that don't fit these companies).

"We need two or three seniors who, between them, can handle the fact that our cloud resources are split between AWS and Azure 80/20, who understand security well enough to enforce least privilege for users, can write reliable if inelegant code in bash, python, golang and - when we have embedded stuff - lua. We'd also like people to be cost aware since we aren't made of money, and to be able to take ownership of CI, observability, logging, k8s in the form of EKS, a few VMs, and some difficult to change legacy stuff. Plus, provide the devs with a sensible local environment to work in that is as prod-like as you can make it, mentor a junior or two, wrap everything into some kind of infrastructure-as-code setup, present options to architects who are sometimes operating outside their field of expertise, and run the standups a d retros when your manager is on holiday"

Or as they would call it, "devops".