I’m freelancing for a lawyer right now and want out even though there’s nothing out there unless I want to commute 3-5 days/week and take a massive pay cut. The pay is good and consistent but… I would say the good lawyers are going to naturally be bad clients for software development services. “Can’t be bothered” is how I would sum it up. Can’t be bothered to flush out requirements, can’t be bothered to use any project management tools like JIRA or Basecamp, absolutely no interest in understanding the difference between Solution A and Solution B or the potential consequences of either.
I won’t commute. No point in being a software engineer if I have to drive to an open office floor plan just to utilize a bunch of tools to try to tune out my surroundings and focus (eg., noise cancelling headphones).
I think I can get in somehwere via a referral but these friends/former coworkers don’t sell them at all. One is always complaining about a deadweight engineer on the team who hasn’t been fired because of nepotism. One always says how soul-sucking his job is, that the SRE basically decides how things are built rather than an architect, and it’s in the advertising space. The third one is a company I used to work for, and they’re full-remote now but apparently still rely heavily on cheap, garbage offshore “talent” which is why I left in the first place.
I love writing code and building apps but as time goes on it looks more and more like it’ll have to just be a hobby.
I thought about trying handyman type stuff. I have most of the tools needed, and I do things correctly. Like with code, I hate cutting corners and tend to be slower but I think deliver higher quality output. Some will say that is not appreciated anywhere- and perhaps least of all in the “handyman” space- I mean who wants to pay $80/hour for me when they can get another guy to do an “adequate” job for $60/hour?
I’ve also thought about building an app and trying to sell it/turn it into a revenue stream (I have a few ideas ) because it’s what I know how to do and if nobody is going to pay me I might as well write code “for me”.
Bad time to be a SWE... Yet paragraphs of extremely nitpicky requirements for a job, turning up nose at opportunities for nonsense reasons.
SWEs truly do not recognize how extremely pampered and privileged they are. It might be a bad time to be a SWE but it's a worse time to be almost anything else.
What struck me was that the lawyer wasn’t interested in getting into all the nuts and bolts of software development. Of course they weren’t. That’s your job.
Of course I don't expect to wax poetic about the finer technical details of an implementation- what I mean is he tends to get frustrated at the technical limitations, but has no interest in understanding those technical limitations so that he might curb his expectations and align them more with reality.
Example: I wrote an ETL pipeline that processes "hundreds of millions" of records. It takes several hours to run (on my goddamn desktop computer). He doesn't understand why it takes "so long", and doesn't want to understand why. Also little interest/desire in paying for server compute that might get it done faster.
It’s empirically a bad time to be a SWE. We’ve seen more layoffs than any other field since 2022. Times is hard, but for us it feels unnecessary and artificial.
You can break my balls about having “high standards”, but the reality is our industry is absolutely plagued with MBAs and other non-technical folk who think they know better than we do about things like how we are most productive and how software should be written. It’s a plenty-toxic field made worse by, surprise, MBAs who don’t understand LLMs but have an unfounded belief that they can replace engineers outright (2024-)…. Or MBAs who thought hiring every SWE they possibly could would be a good idea because borrowing money was “basically free” and they could just throw things at the wall to see what stuck and ax the rest (2020-2022).
If being a software engineer means constantly swimming against the current with things like commuting to an office, allowing non-technical people to make architectural decisions, and getting yelled at and cursed at over the phone because an ML model is “only” ~90% accurate…. It’s not the career for me.
I guess by comparisons to extremely anomolous conditions, yes it is a bad time. But it is still a time in which it is better to be a SWE than so many other careers. I'm not making FAANG money and my life is so fucking easy and comfortable compared to basically anyone I interact with IRL (aside from other SWEs). It seems like dealing with a mild form of what every other office worker deals with is a very low price to pay.
Perhaps it is an especially bad moment to be a laid off tech worker due to the surge in supply, but that's a very small proportion of SWEs.
I'm sorry you're being shouted at and cursed at, that's totally unacceptable in any workplace and I hope you're able to find something better. FWIW there are still places that give their SWEs offices with doors that close.
I appreciate the empathy. I don't have much insight into "other industries", so I believe that even unemployed I would be better off than most (I have an emergency fund after all).
We should all be very worried when even ~5% of us can't find work. Sure, in the past it was just part of a cycle and the jobs "came back", but in the meantime it is bad for everyone- employed or not- when the employers have the leverage. Those who are employed are basically stuck- and employers know this. Employer abuse will run rampant. Stay late. Do the work of two people. Put up with your boss's attitude. Quit and they'll replace you within the week with someone a little more desperate than you.
There's also no guarantee those jobs are coming back, or coming back within the expected time-frame. How many years was the tech job market "bad" following 2000? 2008? By official metrics, this recession hasn't even formally started yet, even though we've arguably been in one since 2022 or 2023. Even if the timer were to start today and stocks fell 30%, it might be another 2-4 years before companies "recover" and feel like hiring SWEs again.
If all that's out there for SWEs are "scraps" that I have to vigorously fight over with other engineers via bullshit hoops like leetcode - I don't think it's worth it. I mean we're at the point where companies are just going to hire whoever they like more from a personality/appearance standpoint. That's just the natural outcome of having five, ten, or fifty otherwise-identical and equally-qualified candidates to choose from.
> I would say the good lawyers are going to naturally be bad clients for software development services. “Can’t be bothered” is how I would sum it up. Can’t be bothered to flush out requirements, can’t be bothered to use any project management tools like JIRA or Basecamp, absolutely no interest in understanding the difference between Solution A and Solution B or the potential consequences of either.
Sounds pretty good to me TBH. I see this stuff as part of software development, though often there's a specialised role (e.g. project manager) that handles it, I think there's value in learning to enjoy it. If they don't want to use Jira, can you make it work for them via their preferred channel and write your own tickets? If they don't care about the difference between two solutions, does that mean they trust you? Can you communicate it in terms they care about (e.g. economics, security)?
I can see how you'd want to focus on the code, but I really do think the stuff between the stakeholder's brain and the code can be a satisfying part of the job as well.
Yeah fair enough. I do write my own tickets. I don't think that resolves the "can't be bothered" attitude- that they're very busy and value their time very highly.
I will add another interesting quirk- he will never admit fault and in written communication tends to "make assertions" and I feel like I have to defend them or the lack of defense means his assertions are correct "in a court of law" - I don't know if I'm describing that well. Basically he has it so ingrained in him never to say anything that may be used against him later, even though obviously I have no intention of suing him now or in the future.
It amounts to a sense of under-appreciation and that I am not respected.
We have a patent together through this project. It's very interesting work that I wouldn't be doing anywhere else. It definitely could be worse.
I really think the current best lane to be in in software is self-employed/startup. We’ve been in a recession for like a year, and will have another year before capital frees up. The big players and startups are dying from entropy and bad UX, and in 2 years there will be money on the table for the thing that replaces whatever shitty software you’re currently using.
What makes you think that capital will free up in a years time? I only ask because this feels like the start of a winter to me. Not one that's approaching an end.
Donald Trump has been complaining about the Fed's interest rate being too high going all the way back to his first term (perhaps even earlier). It's no secret that he wants Powell to drop rates to zero or near-zero.
The "glass half-full" among us will tell you this tariff stuff is all part of Trump's 3D-chess plan to refinance U.S. debt to a lower rate. Personally I doubt it. Everything he does is for himself, and it's only coincidence that sabotaging the economy to get rates to zero could benefit the National Debt.
Anyway, the tech hiring spree we saw in 2020-2021 was fed by rates being at or near zero. If money is free or nearly-free to borrow, why not hire everyone you can and try to grow your company as quickly as possible?
So in theory, bringing rates back down will ease companies' recession fears - not necessarily because they would think a recession isn't coming - no, I'm sure we will all still be expecting a recession "any day" - but with money very cheap or free to borrow, there's no risk to hiring people, starting new projects - because when shit hits the fan, there's negligible additional financial burden from that hiring/starting of new projects. Maybe 2% interest on the debt taken out to pay those people and start those projects. That might as well be 0% to a company, especially one that is FAANG-sized.
I've been saying for years now that the Fed dropping rates to 0% would solve the tech job market woes, and I still believe that. BUT- I make no guarantees against terrible side effects of dropping the interest rate back to zero. I think it will revive the tech job market... and cause many other, bad side-effects (including heightened inflation).
Everyone is hot to trot for AI, but these companies (even FAANG) are working at partial-capacity for developing AI-driven products because they're afraid to hire right before a recession. If they could hire and otherwise expand "for free" I think we would see another 2020-2021 from a tech hiring perspective. Things would be stupid again. You'd have more of the "I work at Google and do absolutely nothing", more instances of senior engineers pulling $250k base salaries... It would be a great time for SWEs, but probably at the detriment to everyone else via things like inflation.
It’s hard to say how long we’ve been in a “recession”. My personal recession has been going since 2023. That’s when I last held a full-time job. I’ve been “1099 for table scraps for the last 2 years, and it doesn’t show signs of stopping.
So in that sense, absolutely self-employed has been the route for me that has yielded income.
I won’t commute. No point in being a software engineer if I have to drive to an open office floor plan just to utilize a bunch of tools to try to tune out my surroundings and focus (eg., noise cancelling headphones).
I think I can get in somehwere via a referral but these friends/former coworkers don’t sell them at all. One is always complaining about a deadweight engineer on the team who hasn’t been fired because of nepotism. One always says how soul-sucking his job is, that the SRE basically decides how things are built rather than an architect, and it’s in the advertising space. The third one is a company I used to work for, and they’re full-remote now but apparently still rely heavily on cheap, garbage offshore “talent” which is why I left in the first place.
I love writing code and building apps but as time goes on it looks more and more like it’ll have to just be a hobby.
I thought about trying handyman type stuff. I have most of the tools needed, and I do things correctly. Like with code, I hate cutting corners and tend to be slower but I think deliver higher quality output. Some will say that is not appreciated anywhere- and perhaps least of all in the “handyman” space- I mean who wants to pay $80/hour for me when they can get another guy to do an “adequate” job for $60/hour?
I’ve also thought about building an app and trying to sell it/turn it into a revenue stream (I have a few ideas ) because it’s what I know how to do and if nobody is going to pay me I might as well write code “for me”.
Brass tacks, it’s a bad time to be a SWE.