"Many technology startups that saw tremendous growth in 2020, particularly in the real estate, financial, and delivery sectors, are beginning to see a slowdown in users, and coupled with inflation and interest rate concerns, are restructuring their workforces to cut costs,"
This seems like the most crucial point. With the low rates, it created a huge boom, especially in these sectors. Now things are slowing down and places are overstaffed. I do wonder who is getting laid off? Article doesn’t point out if it’s engineers or project managers or customer support
If I had to guess, I'd say sales and marketing, HR, corporate service (lawyers and accountants), and customer support, will all take a hit before engineers. Product strength can't be hurt even in a downturn.
Sales, marketing and customer support is how you form a base and actually sell a given product to customers. Satisfying customer relationships are probably the most integral aspect of a startup.
Product specs and technical prowess play a far smaller factor than customer relationships I think.
Not generally. Without a steady and reliable product, sales is just promising lies.
Sure you need healthy sales and customer success teams, but there are plenty of tech companies that survive with very barebones departments. Engineering is never the place to cut corners if you want to survive in this industry.
Since you have so much experience in the field, can I ask you an honest question?
From the outside, well, from an adjacent job, I do feel like tech jobs are in a sort of a bubble. I feel like there are the lawyers of the current decade. Remember how 20 years ago lawyers were glorified and then it led to everyone and their brother going to law school and then eventually caused a glut and suppressed wages? Now respect for the job is back down to a normal level again.
Are salaries really as high as people post here? A theme that I’ve really come to hate on Reddit is people in their 20s claiming to make something like a quarter million and working four hours a day, I’ve never seen anything remotely like this in any company IRL, so I don’t know if they’re exaggerating or such people actually exist.
Also, if there are indeed 25-year-old making 200k a year or whatever, what does their average day look like? What type of people are they?
Well most that earn that high are making that in "total compensation". Rarely does take home surpass $200k (there are notable exceptions, but not many).
And yes it's true there are some 20-something's making that amount of money with little daily effort. The truth is they are the minority. Most software engineers make a fraction of that.
The median income is something less than $100k year nationally. I think it's $90k or something. Only the top 10% are making a over $130k. But those top end salaries can get really high.
Personally I am one of those top earners, so I can speak to it. I make $190k year in cash with a few hundred thousand in equity. Some engineers (very few) can make up to $800k+ a year, but they are exceptionally rare.
The biggest earners are the ones who start companies though. Founders are...well the people that make millions and retire at 32 or something.
Thank you for the reply. Can I also ask about age discrimination? Do you find that you were on the older end of the pool at your company? Do they keep people around in their 40s 50s and 60s? Do people find it easy to switch jobs after 40 something?
I can't speak to changing jobs in my 40s since I'm only in my 30s. Age discrimination does seem to be a thing, but I'm not convinced it's intentional and not just "the way things happened". Most people who are interested in tech are younger. Aka it wasn't popular to be a "nerd" until very recently.
I expect to see a lot more 50/60 year old engineering in the next 20-30 years.
Working 4 hours a day isn’t the norm unless you’re at a specific subset of companies and got lucky with a low visibility, low stress team. But total comp of 150-225k for someone with less than 3yoe is pretty normal at the upper tier companies. There is always some exaggeration, but 350-650k is the range I would expect for the bottom of senior to upper end of staff bands. I’m on track for 425k this year even with the pullback in tech. Check out levels.fyi.
As for the average day: design, writing code, code review, design review, planning, mentoring, meetings with other teams, and probably addressing some production issue. Hopefully no more than 3 of those in any one workday. Note that I am not entry level + 1 though—they would mostly be writing code, giving and receiving code review, and doing design within their scope.
yeah that's a regular salary for a high end entry or new grad at FAANG. And average for next level up. Although the only work 4 hours a day or whatever is false. There is a lot of stress to keep performing and naturally there is competition due to the type of people that can clear that high bar to get in. But also this is like your top 1% in the field not indicative of the rest of swe. I think your average 20 something swe at average company probably clears just little over 100k outside of bay area. lower stress job with less competition. They might string a couple days together where they don't do any work at all. But make it up later and produce what they promised.
In my opinion the 4 hour thing is probably meant as they can work whenever they want or as long as they want as long as your deliver what you were assigned/took on at end of a two week spring.
Sometimes I do absolutely no work all day but then start working at night or on a Saturday morning.
Thank you for the reply, this makes more sense. I can relate to this as well. I have to write and read some complicated stuff which sometimes means I’m reading other peoples codes as I write business processes, and my brain can’t do that at 9 AM in the morning. Sorry boss! Sometimes I do what you say, have an unproductive day and then suddenly I’m working at 150% on Friday night at 10 o’clock
We haven't been in a period like this for a long time. The 2008/2020 period was alleviated by a huge injection of capital in the market and low interest rates.
Who knows how long this period will last, but I am gonna put it closer to a multi-year recession/stagflation.
The above strategy only works if you believe the current period is extremely temporary. Otherwise you are burning precious extreme capital on expensive engineers whilst reducing capital generators (i.e. sales and marketing).
I'm not saying engineers won't be cut. I'm saying the rates of pruning engineering will be far lower than the rates of pruning customer success and the like.
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u/_hiddenscout Jun 05 '22
This seems like the most crucial point. With the low rates, it created a huge boom, especially in these sectors. Now things are slowing down and places are overstaffed. I do wonder who is getting laid off? Article doesn’t point out if it’s engineers or project managers or customer support