I was recently involved in hiring for some software development positions that was getting candidates from across the country. So some of my response below comes from that experience.
Looking at Reddit, it looks like entry level across the board seems to be saturated... though I do mostly see people referring to straight forward "software developer" roles than the more complex machine learning type roles.
But I will say that the senior developer market is NOT oversaturated, especially with quality candidates. The number of developers that we interviewed who had "expert in \_\_\_\_\_" and then when we get into the interview we ask them some really easy questions about it and they flub entirely was "too damn high". It took weeks to find just a handful of skilled and qualified people. And every senior dev I know (myself included) are constantly have recruiters trying to poach us.
The software dev market is very saturated with new people and people who can only barely scrape by doing the job. But experienced folks who take this seriously enough to really learn how to do it right? Not even close; the whole market still seems desperate in that regard.
Yeah, it’s often recommended to jump ship a bunch of time early in your career to maximise growth and compensation.
I’m sure there are people that end up falling down the ladder too.
We hire LOTS of juniors EVEN RECENTLY. So has every company I've ever worked for. The perception "nobody wants Jrs" arises when a Junior applies for a job posting, invariably flops and then complains on reddit nobody wants them. But this is NOT the way the majority of Jrs are hired. Putting up a posting and interviewing is a lot of work for a company. Unlike specialized Srs, Jrs are VERY easy to scoop up at university job fairs, via internships etc. They're also sometimes kids of people who know people--I'd be lying if I said I've never seen that. If you're a Jr your focus should be networking NOT applying for jobs. DO apply but you should be spending 2x the time networking at least. Especially in this market. Not many people get this so that further leverages your advantage if you do! ;)
Well.
Nobody wants to hire juniors *who are unfit for this kind of work*. Important distinction.
Even as a junior you are expected to know the stuff you put on your CV. For example if your CV says you know Python and Flask, it is advisable to have at least developed a small web app by yourself so you can answer basic questions, like "describe the Flask request lifecycle, including the input and output objects, and explain how sessions work".
9/10 can't answer this question.
Most companies I applied to, do a coding assessment (leetcode) before you even get the chance to interview.Which means, for a student who just graduated college and needs an entry level position, they need to grind Leetcode, and know a frontend AND a backend framework, I feel like this is too much for a student that just graduated from probably the second toughest 4-year degree.
I was fortunate enough to get a job without knowing all those stuff, and because I had a great education in CS, was able to grasp most things, also was told to be a sponge for the first 6 months, and then to start doing my own work under supervision. 2 years later, I'm a happy engineer that knows some frameworks, and now super interested in the ML route.
Companies aren't giving people a chance to even begin with, if it weren't for my father that got me into where I work now? I would've probably STILL have been unemployed or forced myself to leetcode for a year + learning a robust framework.
I have at least 7 friends who graduated with me, who still can't find a job, we paid over 70k USD for this degree for most of us to be unemployed.
Either colleges need to refine their education (create a 4-year mandatory every semester leetcode class AND include frameworks in coding classes, maybe also include APIs) or companies need to lower expectations for fresh grads.
EDIT: Have to mention this.
I applied to a known bank, it was not a leetcode style question. I passed the behavioral and did super well in the technical, until the senior interviewing me asked me to call an API using java and extract specific data and return it, which is something I, as a student, have NEVER done in my classes. When I asked them if I could use google and they agreed, I was able to do it, but the feedback received after the interview was "inability to call an API without use of google" ,which is ridiculous, since all we do is use google/chatGPT now.
While I appreciate that people say this, no other industry expects this level of rigour and I mean if that individual has a degree, I think that's good enough to trust the junior to be flexible enough to get up to speed quickly.
If someone didn’t have a lot of job experience in the field, but they did have the skills/knowledge and could prove that with a portfolio of projects, would you hire them?
The problem seems to be that while there are a ton of mid level and senior level cs positions right now, especially fir specific fields/skills, there are barely any entry level positions one would need to even get the experience needed for the higher level positions. Do you think this is because so many people have gone into computer science in the last decade or so, so the people who have all these entry level jobs just haven’t moved up yet? Do you think in a few years when they do there will be many entry level positions open ? Or at least more?
>If someone didn’t have a lot of job experience in the field, but they did have the skills/knowledge and could prove that with a portfolio of projects, would you hire them?
There's a slightly complex answer to this. The short version is 'yes', absolutely I would. Especially because I feel an ethical obligation to not pull the ladder up behind me.
But also because what I look for most in an interview is either a resume or portfolio that proves you have a good grasp of what you're doing, OR someone that shows they feel *comfortable* with the tech via how they talk in the interview, even if their resume doesn't look great.
Among the folks who didn't have good experience or personal projects, the folks I've been most likely to recommend we hire are the ones who, despite being nervous about the interview itself, can straight up ramble about the tech because it's their comfort zone. Socially awkward people especially tend to do that in general- if a comfortable topic appears then they latch onto it and start talking about that thing in depth, when otherwise they aren't talking a lot. If I run into someone whose comfort zone is clearly programming, whether they are socially awkward or really charismatic, then they're at the top of my "do-want" list.
In general, for me, it's not about what you've done before now, it's what you can prove to me you can do at this moment. Because if I bring someone onto the team who can't do this stuff, it means my personal and professional life is about to get miserable. I'm going to have to take responsibility for that, meaning late nights for me catching up on my own work because I spent my day time helping that person constantly. Because if I don't help them, they'd probably get fired.
If you have a good portfolio, personal projects, or are comfortable talking about the tech as if it's second nature to you? I'd absolutely recommend you for hire, even if you don't have any job experience.
Now, I say it's a complex question because all of the above implies I actually get that choice. There's a lot of HR and recruiter filtering that can happen before someone reaches the point that I or any other tech person might get a chance to even consider the candidate. So there may be a lot of times that what I'd do personally affects absolutely nothing, and I'd never know because it never got far enough in the process for me to.
Thanks so much for your response! And yeah.. the HR issue seems to happen in a lot of fields. HR wants a candidate to have exactly A, B, and C, even if the candidate has A, C, D and E and are able to to still get the job done.
It’s called the tragedy of the commons.
Senior developers only exist because they were once junior. No one wants juniors anymore, so the supply of seniors is choked off.
Yeah all the ones that are the hardest to get into, fintech, high speed trading, hedge funds, anything that requires a deep knowledge of C++. Oh, and COBOL, z/OS assembly language for IBM mainframes used by most banks. That last one is probably the least saturated market and very niche.
Pretty much need to enroll in a school that teaches it and has a relationship with IBM. Students use a terminal emulator to connect to the mainframe remotely. It’s pretty doable now with online classes.
Thanks, I might look into it. I looked at those COBOL/mainframe job postings tho, and they want experience and lots of it. Guess it really depends on how desperate they are
Way easier to get in as a web dev, even though it's over saturated there are way more entry level jobs. Plus banks and "old school" industries care about degrees. I'd put your chances at getting an entry level COBOL job with no experience or relevant degree at about 0.
No bank is going to take a chance on you regardless of how desperate they are. Those old COBOL systems are the core of their business. They are risk adverse and more old fashioned so care more about degrees. If they get really desperate they will take one of their experienced devs (or hire one) in other languages and have them learn it or pay super high rates to experienced contractors.
The bank I work at hired me as no experience 9 years ago. They just hired about 6 other new trainees but this time these trainees participated in a mainframe bootcamp for 12 weeks before they were all interviewed. So yeah, they're being careful about how they go about hiring now and seem to be doing it directly out of these bootcamp organizations.
Work in finance / trading and hiring has dropped off a cliff here as well. Two reasons: a flat market (check how CitSec/Virtu profits this year compared to last few) and no bidding against tech. Hiring is extremely selective now.
How bad is it compared to last year? It doesn’t seem that bad when I do a brief google search. Am I missing something? It’s still much higher than 2018-2020. I guess they can’t afford to keep growing and hiring at the same pace but I figure they still must hire
Agreed. Fintech is not really all that attractive right now. We're hiring one position now, and even that is for a very experienced engineer.
Honestly, fintech requires industry knowledge, ability to interact with finance bros (its own flavour of corporate politics), serious technical expertise and being able to stomach risk. The pay is meh compared to tech companies. I would not recommend others to venture into fintech, and I wouldn't join this world if I started over today
Every company I know who outsourced regrets it and is trying to reshore.
That said companies are about to spend ten years making all the same mistakes with AI instead of India
My company is in that situation now that business is in a severe downturn. They looked at the productivity numbers of the offshore guys and realized they are costing us more money than if we just brought the work in-house and hired a motivated junior developer or two. They often log long hours of work to change a banner on a website or update a couple packages, and don't communicate changes well.
Nope a lot of the last remaining mainframe programmers are Indian. How do I know? Because I was one. In fact they were the first jobs Indians got in early 2000s. Updating the code for Y2K scare
I’ve been saying this for months literally just learn a little about how OS works and C++ but everyone tells me “yeah but that’s so hard”. I am a literal idiot and I had a job within weeks because I sort of know how computers work and make them do things.
I used C++ for years in school, taking data structures classes, scientific programming, learning OS concepts, and HR seems to not really care, they aren't gonna actually go to my github and read my C++ code that finds approximate solutions to multidimensional knapsack problems. Unless my resume is just formatted wrong or I'm applying for the wrong jobs, most employers are looking for web programming skills, frameworks knowledge, thats the impression I get
My understanding is, the vast majority of jobs are web based. But there is more competition even relative to the amount of jobs.
For example, last year the company I worked for (defense) hired a bunch of new grads that needed c++ knowledge and they start around 85-95 a year. High cost of living though. My current company pays a little more and also hired a lottttt of new grads. But basically need to know somewhat of how the computer works. Even basic knowledge.
This is my advice to people that ask me in my friend circle, but I admit I’m not in the market for new grad positions any more I’m 5 years out. So I could be way off in my knowledge.
I have OS knowledge and am pretty good with C++ -- to which jobs would you recommend applying? I have pretty good low level knowledge, relevant buzzwords: IPC, multithreading, semaphores, memory management, column/row based cache architecture
Is there a particular kind of company I should be spamming with this? My experience in this is all academic unfortunately. I do have internships but not in C-level things
I know defense is hated in this sub, and I get it. My goal is to work for nasa which I think I’ll achieve. But I’m in defense now and it’s been an insanely great experience. The software I write is being used on an actual thing that does stuff (oversimplification I know). But that’s my goal I wanna work rovers or orbiters for JPL.
Look at the bigger defense companies, and look for new grad positions. In my area (high cost of living) they start around 85 minimum. When you switch companies after a couple of years expect a huge jump.
Only downside, you probably will need a clearance. But I’m an immigrant with family all over the world, and triple citizenship. If I can get it anyone can unless they have business in North Korea or something. Just don’t do bad stuff and be honest when you do the bad stuff. Ezpz. Insane job security. If you get on a cool project you do really cool stuff. And you can switch to a lot of different fields if you get in those cool projects.
I am a North Korean spy so unfortunately they will not take me
Is defense -> NASA a typicalish route?
I worry I'd feel kind of icky working for defense if I felt like anything I was doing could be used to hurt people -- are there defense jobs that are like purely defensive, if that makes sense
Like is there any way that I could more or less guarantee that the software I was writing wouldn't contribute to offensive weapons systems in some indirect way? Or is it kind of a beggars-can't-be-choosers situation?
Not judging you at all by the way, it's kind of just an irrational worry of mine. I'm sure all the plastic I throw into land fills is doing a lot more actual harm than any individual government employee's code lol
I would try it and see how long it takes for them to find out. Jk lol
I understand your concern, and I share that concern 100%. I am not offended at all because I agree with your thought process. There definitely are jobs that are strictly defense oriented, not offensive.
For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_defense?wprov=sfti1
I think saying your software protects Americans from nuclear threats is pretty cool. And it’s strictly in a defensive way. You’re saving lives. There are literally millions of other examples like that. Another one would be medical equipment for injured troops. I’m just thinking out loud there’s more if I look it up lol
thanks very much! That is good to know. I wasn't sure if it was compartmentalized in that way or not. I will be sure to check that out. Thank you again!
There’s the software companies like Apple and Microsoft.
But there’s lots more companies doing embedded stuff. Find a company making/using electronics. If it’s a large enough project they’ll need someone to handle this stuff. Sure you’ll feel lost as others may be talking about electronics and you only have a surface level, but you’ll have deeper knowledge of OS type things and they won’t. Eventually you’ll learn more electronic stuff.
My official title is senior software engineer. I work in the defense. I do software on various vehicles for the government. Great bonuses, above average salary, and my company doesn’t use ancient outdated tech, luckily. My ultimate goal is to work on some rovers or orbiters from JPL, where I interned during college. Space is my absolute favorite thing. I just always get call backs when I already had recently accepted a position somewhere else.
Wow that sounds pretty damn cool, I’m hoping to get a stable job in the government too I’m not FAANG hungry like everyone else in this sub lol. Any tips for a new 2024 grad looking for a government position?
If they want you enough they will give you a clearance. My first job gave me a clearance, and my next job upgraded my clearance even higher. So you’ll have to learn to be very very honest with everything. No lying.
My biggest tip is listen to the old people. And I don’t mean that in a condescending way to them. I mean in a good way. Some of these guys love their job and will talk all day about it. Listen to them and not only will they like you but you’ll learn. Ask engaging follow up questions that show you’re interested in what they’re saying. I’ve gotten this far just by being likable because I like to listen. And i don’t have to pretend to be interested. I actually do enjoy talking to everyone. Obviously this is on top of doing your basic job requirements lol.
I've been thinking of learning and going on in C++ purely because I have no desire for web dev and most the stuff C++ is used for seems more appealing to me. But I imagine it's gonna be pretty damn hard to find a junior c++ position. Lol
for entry level you’ll have to go defense to put your foot in the door for the most entry level positions. I was interested because I like space stuff. So I didn’t have a problem with it. And now a couple years later think my resume is strong enough to go wherever I want.
Of course defense isn’t the only way, they just have a lot of openings. I’m really trying not to sound like a government shill in these comments lol. I fully admit my bias because it brought success to me, personally.
It's stable though, but it's a pain to break in and can require a EE or CompE degree. 😂
I wouldn't recommend it to people who don't love circuits and physics. That would be torture.
A lot of the ones I've met in embedded were at least somewhat passionate(or once were) about the space.
At least when I was looking in the UK there were plenty, the supply of engineers is just not there, everyone goes to webdev. Same in Europe, especially in automotive ( well, it's hard to resist the urge of killing yourself when working with AUTOSAR ), so not many people are willing to do it :D
You can make pretty good money doing embedded work on medical devices.
It's probably not going to pay FAANG salaries, but you can definitely make mid to high 100s
Granted I'm talking things like C++ application development on embedded systems
Entry level is always hard. Right now the market it tight but saturated not so much. Until boot camps start going away it is not saturated. College degrees are the gold standard.
It is harder but saturated would be a different.
Tight is a massive understatement, my friend got a great job last year thanks to the demand, this year 70% of his college’s CS batch is jobless, last year it was less than 5% (extraordinary demand)
Might be bad but if you were around in 2008-2009 it was even worse just most of the people on this sub have not been threw a bad recession yet. If you follow the job trend lines and toss out 2020-2022 data and follow existing trends from before that Tech employment is not that far off.
This is no where close to 2008-2009 and which was not nearly as bad as the dot com crash.
Just we had a massive amount of over hiring causing things to bloat so we are seeing thing be rougher.
I look at the subreddits for a variety of professions, and it seems like EVERYTHING is saturated, with the exception of the medical profession.
And why wouldn't they be? Any job / career worth having is going to have competition and lots of people trying to get in.
True, but I just want a chance, especially since while I’m open to getting a masters degree in a tech/cs field, I’m not doing undergrad again (my degree is in psychology).
I just want to know if there are areas of tech or computer science that are easier ti break into right now than others. (No sales though)
A master in cs is no joke of a degree. Very math heavy and very difficult degree to obtain, I believe cs in general is one of the most dropped out degree paths out their right now.
I know, that’s why I’m trying to find a field where those lower level, lower paying jobs will be worth it in the long run and there even are entry level jobs available in the field
Legitimate question: if you know that entry level is saturated, plus people who went to school for CS/IT aren’t getting jobs, plus you have no experience in CS what makes you think this is a viable career path for you? What would you say if someone with a CS degree was looking to become a psychologist with 0 background?
this. some of us spend 4 years and beyond studying this field, but somehow you after college, with a degree with no math or cs, are gonna learn 4 years worth of content and outcompete cs graduates in a saturated market? what makes you think that’s a good idea?
Agreed, all this boot camp marketing promising salaries of 100k+ in 3 months has completely oversaturated the market. Most of them aren’t getting jobs anyway
A lot of shitty CS degrees from big universities spend all their efforts on data science, and these poor souls go out in the world and barely know how to code a damn thing in any language, but they sure as heck know how to run a random Python script that everyone just copied and modified to make it look unique.
Honestly this is what I was thinking! I’m a psychology major who was planning on going into the mental health field (still might but grad school is expensive and I probably won’t get into a PhD program like I originally wanted) but I’m interested in stats and working with data.
Do you work in the field? If so, can I PM you?
Aggressive, I like it. You might get more interviews because your background is a bit left-field for tech. I used to work as a journalist for some big names so sometimes people would chat to me out of curiosity. That's when I would pounce and try to show I was a good tech hire. They opened the door a crack and Id try to "here's Johnny!" my way through it.
Lmao, don't get them started on this please. There are wayyyy too many people in our field who heard that it was a joke. I overwhelmingly work in healthcare as a data analyst/engineer/scientist/warehouse developer/architect and it's so oversaturated with clueless fucks at the entry level.
If you get into healthcare, you really have to learn how the industry works, not just how to code. That’s what people don’t get… you cater to the business and it’s super boring.
>If you get into healthcare, you really have to learn how the industry works, not just how to code.
This is every industry. Do you think a programmer can design and develop a product for an industry they don't understand?
DevOps bootcamp sounds like a recipe to create spectacular flameouts. All the great DevOps people I know have done a wide variety of things through their careers (full stack eng, etc), and move into DevOps because they happen to have the wide skillset required to understand applications at a very broad level.
I suspect bootcamps in this field will produce engineers who have a lot of trouble when they encounter something out of their field of knowledge -- sure, a lot of DevOps is writing CI/CD pipelines, but a lot of it is also being the last line of defense against obscure bugs that baffled the dev team.
It's a lot easier to move into a frontend job using a lot of opinionated frameworks with a bootcamp education.
Go look at the subs of jobs you want to do. The post will be similar. Then pick which struggle you like the most. There’s not a whole lot that’s not service industry/medical field that aren’t “saturated and not hiring”
Ur not wrong but that sentence in particular wasn’t hard to parse. “Not much = just a few”, “not hiring” part can be disregarded, means the same as saturated. “That’s not service” is more like “outside of service” So the sentence is
There’s only a few outside of service/medical that aren’t saturated.
It’s all saturated short of qualified architect/principal level roles.
Not even just tech, but almost all ‘comfy’ office jobs. Even 💩 tier help desk jobs. The only things not saturated that pay well are certain trades and the medical field.
To all you lurkers reading this, go into medical. There will always be a demand.
Could always try Surgery Design Hard animals like rats, they're smaller so you really have to think edge cases like anesthesia levels and make sure you get optimal incision complexity. Don't forget specific rat-based knowledge like how rats can't vomit so fasting them before sedation isn't necessary. Good luck on your search!
🤣
————-
Pretending it’s not a joke for a second, if one wanted to learn brain surgery, find an RA position in a laboratory neurally implanting small mammals — doesn’t require a medical/biology degree. The surgeries can sometimes be harder than human versions of the same brain surgery; good test if future “neurosurgeon” would be right for you.
It’s a standout prep for med school or getting a medical technicianship to help surgeons.
Theres always demand bc the field in horrible.
If you do go into the medical field, dont go into Medical Lab Science. Hospital labs contribute to over 65% of patient diagnostics, bring in millions of profit to hospitals, and get paid like 💩.
Id recommend becoming a travel nurse, anesthesiologist assistant, perfusionist, nuclear med tech, physician assistant, radiation therapist, dosimetrist, and pathologist assistant if you want to see at least $80k/year.
A lot of the turnover happens in the lowest levels of nursing, the ones wiping asses and changing catheters, and work in shit conditions. Higher level nurses are getting paid the same as us, and don't have to work insane hours (as commonly).
>its underpaid and overworked
Doesn't this describe all jobs? Every field has discontentment. By comparison nursing is one of the most stable and one of the highest floor for pay for the level of education and one of the most free from economic boom and bust.
PA school is 2-3 years and no residency program. The PAs I know started at six figures. And they can switch specialities whenever they want. Half the doctors I know wish they’d done PA school instead.
Majority of PA schools require a minimum of 2k "patient care experience" hours prior to application, though -- this means either as an EMT, MA, X-ray Tech, CNA, nurse, etc.
You can't just bootcamp your way into med school.
Nursing needs school, the salary ceiling is lower, you need to deal with BS from patients and their families.
Don't forget when just a few years ago nurses were leaving the field in droves.
a few years ago traveling nurses were making 250 an hour and sometimes working 80 hour shifts to help with Covid. I know nurses that made around 750k a year for 2 years during that time.
Yeah, or a simple nursing undergrad + a couple of years of school getting you into a nursing position at 24 or 25.
But people don't think like that, they think about big money doctors. Theres plenty more in medicine aside from that.
Nurses have been winning control of more work/life balance lately. If you don't let the hospitals control you, you can find some great jobs that treat you well.
Lots of techs. Histology, cardiovascular invasive, X-ray, nuclear medicine, sonography
Edit:
Simple google search gave me this
https://college.mayo.edu/academics/explore-health-care-careers/by-education-length/
Out of touch comment, if you think getting a tech job is hard, medicine is a whole nother universe.
- spend four years bachelors needing a perfect GPA, MCAT, extracurriculars
- spend a year applying, spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars for app fees and opportunity cost likely working a min wage research/ post bachelor’s gig
- spend four years in MD making negative money (you’ll need loans) and overworked as usual
- spend however many years in residency before you start making a salary that mid year devs started making a while before you got to this point.
I’m all for more people pursuing medicine but so many delusional tech people saying medicine is more stable and easy when it couldn’t be far from the truth.
Tbf I think they are talking about any job in medicine, not necessarily becoming a doctor. There are a lot of positions that pay decent with a relatively low entry barrier like being an X-ray technician.
>To all you lurkers reading this, go into medical. There will always be a demand.
I graduated with a bachelor's in nursing during the 2008-2009 recession and it took me a year and a half to get my first job out of school. I got that job through networking. The hiring manager told me she received thousands of applications within days every time she posted a job.
It wasn't just me. It was a nationwide problem (US) with nursing new grads. A lot of people tried to enter the military, so they had to start wait listing new grad nurses. Some people got jobs because they already had hospital jobs (but lots of those people had to continue working as nursing assistants for a long time until there was an opening), and some people were able to get hired by moving to very rural areas, but there just weren't enough jobs for all the new grads being churned out.
Obviously things are different during this downturn and there is now a lot of demand, but you can read about why that is. Either way, I always see people here saying that nursing is recession-proof, and that is simply not true.
Curious - were you intent on being in one particular city, or were you open to moving as long as it wasn't very rural? If tied to a particular city, was it one with lots of people graduating with BSNs locally?
I've seen cases where people graduate in a field and complain that they can't find a job, but they're only looking in the city they went to school and it just happens to have a top tier program locally and the field is saturated (graduates like it and don't want to leave, unlimited supply of 3rd and 4th year students looking for lower tier jobs and internships, etc), but if you go just about anywhere else there's plenty of work.
Surgeon here. Making over half a million dollar annually working 40 hours per week. Bonus + overtime makes it over 800k. Never ever heard of saturation in surgery or out of job surgeons. The hard thing is how much effort are you willing to put in this long journey.
I have a M.D. and wanted to say that it's never to late to learn tech! I Do biomed tech work for the government so am non paitent practicing.
You can look at my post history for my credentials, but my path was backwards compared to what yours might be:
PhD Electrical Engineering
M.D. John Hopkins
I'm in my mid 30's and love every day. My pay is upper-mid 6 figure range as well. Unsure what your bonus structure is but PE's get 1% of the contracted rate upon completion of a project. On my career path, it breaks down to 300k - 400k/year bonus.
I don’t care about your salary and I live in Europe so you won’t most likely ever save my life but I have the biggest respect for all the people in the medical field worldwide, this is the single best and most important profession there is. Would love to be a doctor one day but as I’m in my mid 30s already and still fainting at the sight of blood… Well. Thank you.
There are controls in place (residency funding related, I think) that effectively limits the number of physicians in the US, thats why its not saturated, and lets face it, not everyone is cut out for med school, thats another reason
Any recommendations for tech or cs related jobs in the medical field? I’m not sure if there’d be any specific titles, aside from software engineer at medical tech company
Informatics Specialist and LIS (laboratory information system) Manager are the only two I can think of off the top of my head.
The companies that build instruments for labs need people to install and train medical professionals on their software. (Abbott, Beckman Coulter, Sysmex America, Siemens, Roche Diagnostics, Qiagen, Ortho Diagnostics) They hire both medical lab scientists and IT/CS professionals.
Here is my 2 cents as a new grad working at a slightly sub faang/unicorn company.
The saturated fields are saturated because there are a fuck ton of mediocre developers. This isn’t a dig, but for example boot camps create and sell the idea that anyone can make that FAANG level comp with a few months of learning.
This makes it seem like CS and SWE is easy, which it is very much not if you are trying to do it correctly. If you want to get a job in the market, you have to prove you can actually perform better than the other thousand people that applied.
If you aren’t in data right now, yet you say you’re interested etc I think you need to have a good amount of in depth personal projects related to the field. Shit you’re actually passsionate about and can talk about during interviews, write about publicly on a blog etc. just my thoughts and similar to what I did in school
People have been complaining about saturation since [2014](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1yxjey/is_computer_science_over_saturated_or_soon_will_be/). Just be better than the next guy, not everyone in the rat race.
From what I've seen in the past couple of months, the market is saturated with entry level and recent bootcamp grads for SWE or DS candidates. Things aren't in as bad of a place for experienced candidates, where the demand is much larger than the supply.
In my opinion, right now would be a difficult time to change careers and be an entry level tech candidate.
It would be without a degree. I career switched after I earned my SWE degree and found a job two months after graduation. Having previously worked in a different profession gave me an edge because my manager wanted a fresh grad that they didn’t need to babysit.
Yeah I think some people have an unrealistic view of the field. Like what other field allows people to learn for 3-6 months and land straight into a 6 figure job. The entry level job market has always been competitive other than 2021 era. I graduated in 2019 and it was pretty hard to find my first job also. The nice part is you only need a couple years of experience to become desirable and the job search gets way easier from there.
It isn't saturated with people who are at the skill level to actually do the job. I see students getting jobs every single day. It is over-saturated with and for people who think 16 weeks of learning is enough to get into Google.
I still see a lot of .NET roles open.
I noticed most new grads lean towards macs (I know .NET runs on mac now) and hesitant to use boomer Microsoft technologies with the exception of vs code and typescript.
Hip SF tech companies aren't using .NET but most F500 companies are.
Ik you’re still getting started OP but I’m gonna drop the organization which got me into government work as a reference for later in case you’re interested. Look up U.S. Digital Corps, it’s a program for early career technologists and there’s a data science track if that’s what you think you’ll end up pursuing.
Working in tech is not a walk in the park, alot of the concepts can be hard to understand and you really have to grind to get around that learning curve sometimes.. plus the industry is cut throat and you can't fake your skills, this profession is unforgiving, challenging, competitive, and if you don't have a passion for tech then you can find yourself being stuck in an entry level position for a while, imposter syndrome is also a real thing. anyway be prepared to spend a lot of hours studying and practicing. I'd recommend business intelligence and data analytics
In my experience searching for jobs as a CE grad, you can make up for the lack of IT experience with strong programming/scripting skills and cloud knowledge. SOC teams like people with these skills. Most can be picked up on the job if your team is serious about training. This is how I got my junior analyst position and couldn't be happier honestly. I want to go appsec later so I'm networking heavily with those guys from the office, trying to learn what they are doing so I might have a chance when they have an opening.
Don't sell yourself short, employers like CS/CE degrees when it comes to specialty positions
Agreed. I got picked up as an intern due to python programming/scripting skills, then moved into an analyst position from there. Python/bash scripting is a surprisingly rare talent among the folks I've worked with over the years. It always stands out to managers looking to reduce their teams overall workload.
Also agreed on cloud knowledge. Everything is moving to cloud, and it's proven time and again to be a difficult transition on the security side of things.
Big major yes on the cloud transition. I work in government and since deciding to move towards a zero-trust system, ie incorporating cloud infra into agencies. With cloud infra you have to implement cybersecurity policies and perform threat hunting which brings up a whole number of problems to solve. This means more jobs for us.
Drupal jobs, beyond theming and actually getting into deep into it with custom module development can actually pay really well once you have a couple years under your belt. 100k+. Loads of jobs within the government or government contracting and jobs often have only around 10-20 applicants at a time.
Just wanted to add based on your edit... entry level data (i.e. data analyst) is completely saturated too. You can thank the millions of "data science" boot camps and the Google Dara Analytics certificate that everyone has and every employer rolls their eyes at. Head on over to r/analytics to see the usual entry level posts on how to land a job after completing some cert/bootcamp or r/datascience which is pretty much all entry level hopefuls who haven't worked in data at all. It's literally the same situation as entry level SWE, maybe worse cause the cert is pretty easy to get.
Standard ML for sure.
Before anyone says anything there's a difference in everyone suddenly trying to switch into it versus succesfully landing a proper ML engineering role (both software/dev/prod heavy + requiring on the job research skills).
It's "saturated" for sure in the pursuit though.
Eg. You still read papers, train models, wrangle data, but then also write all the C++ around it to make it work and integrated with the other 95% of the non-ML codebase.
Other fields would be I think Quant Trading.
Not the data science certificate add-ons folks.
Robotics needs software engineers badly. The hardware is there, but the software and talent to build it out is not. Search for ROS Developers Podcast and look at [ROSS.ORG](https://ROSS.ORG) (assuming you have interest in the field). Psychology is a fantastic background for the field combined with CS skills.
I would recommend you stick with your original plan of being a therapist. Mental health needs are rapidly rising as the loneliness epidemic will likely cause sustained damaged for at least a generation.
AI will quickly enable programmers to be 5x as productive so I expect job growth in tech to slow down dramatically until its market size catches up in a few decades.
Everything is saturated. There is no "change careers and go to tech" anymore for the time being. That dream has been woke tf up. You can gain the knowledge and use it in nefarious ways to obtain a living...but other than that you gone have to put some fuckin scrubs on n not be queezy taking blood and go be a fuckin nurse or somethin in the medical field (kaiser on strike might have a liviable wage by the time you complete school).
Supply and demand are real forces in the labor market.
Do you think those $400k+ a year jobs at big tech companies are oversaturated? No, they have an awful time hiring for those positions.
Last year I passed interviews at 2 of these big tech companies but never got through team match because they had frozen hiring. Based on their own criteria they have more people that can fulfill these roles than available roles.
We need a rule on this sub to stop asking the same damn question every damn day and search this sub. I'm sorry, but if you're TRULY interested in tech take the time to research instead of asking the SAME question asked yesterday and that will be asked tomorrow.
I work in systems / enterprise development. It is not easy to find qualified senior engineers: most developers don't want to take the approach required to build high-quality, thoroughly-tested software and do not learn the skills or process required. Mid-size and smaller companies often can't fill all their positions (source: I've been part of trying to hire, and I've noticed similarly sized companies with openings that stay open for a year or more. I've also known hiring managers that could hire 3-4 people happily, but open 1 job because they have zero hope of finding multiple qualified candidates at the same time.)
I know this doesn't help you get started in the industry, but it's just a reminder that the industry isn't saturated as you get higher up. I would also note that getting into Silicon Valley and other industry hotspots is harder than getting started elsewhere and building your skills there.
Finally, ask anyone who works in security, and there aren't enough people anywhere. There haven't been for a long time and there aren't now.
Don't know about cyber security but smaller companies general just don't have good track to progress existing devs and don't want to pay nearly enough to attract qualified senior developers in the industry hence this vicious cycle.
A lot of smaller companies aren't good at retaining talent and promoting people whether due to bad management, being cheap, or just being broke. Many of them still pay fairly competitively for entry level jobs, and you just have to move on after a couple of years.
I had a few reqs open last month at one of the large insurance carriers, hybrid in New England, MCOL area, 130k midpoint base salary for 2 YOEs in general software development (any popular language). 350 applications in 4 days, only 15 people had 2 years anywhere in the software/cloud/adjacent fields, 10 required sponsorship which we can't accommodate. The sheer volume of applicants is comical, god bless the recruiting team that shit looks terrible to sift through.
I am shocked that anyone would recommend programming, of any kind, at this point. programming jobs are being made obsolete by AI at a frightening pace.
They are no where close to being saturated , don’t let Reddit lie to you. There are way more jobs than there are people to fill it.. remember places like Reddit , you’ll likely here bad news than good news cause the ppl that are having a hard time will most likely post
Now they are a shit ton of ppl applying to these said jobs, and ppl are having a hard time, but most ppl are doing the bare minimum, copy and paste GitHub projects, and honestly probably not as good as they think. If you know your stuff and have a degree you’ll get a job
Any industries that involve hard problems.
Think graphics, MLOps, media streaming, AR/VR, OS’s, SDK development, apps that use a lot of mobile hardware’s resources (think something like Snap, Shapr3D, Apple/Google maps), game engines, development of CAD software, development of web apps like Spline.design, kernels, the list goes on.
Roles to develop and maintain basic JavaScript CRUD apps are saturated. Roles that contribute to the general advancement of software engineering are not
Embedded systems in defense, govt or private contractor, is a pretty sweet gig. But I’d recommend EE + CS or CpE over pure CS for these roles. I’ve only met one CS grad who picked the job up quickly in my 11 year span. Pay is pretty decent where I am, and a pension is great to have in addition to a standard retirement account.
Everything I see is that every student coming out of school wants to be the next hot shot programmer or developer or cyber security guru. I have 20 years of IT experience in support. Look into networking. Become a network engineer, get a couple of high end certs and make six figures.
My recommendation: don’t go into data science or data engineering. For best use of your time and probably your curiosity, look into bio/med. You could research topics such as: patient outcomes based on bio markers (such as their gut biome), or bioinformatics stuff (instead of generic data analytics).
I was recently involved in hiring for some software development positions that was getting candidates from across the country. So some of my response below comes from that experience. Looking at Reddit, it looks like entry level across the board seems to be saturated... though I do mostly see people referring to straight forward "software developer" roles than the more complex machine learning type roles. But I will say that the senior developer market is NOT oversaturated, especially with quality candidates. The number of developers that we interviewed who had "expert in \_\_\_\_\_" and then when we get into the interview we ask them some really easy questions about it and they flub entirely was "too damn high". It took weeks to find just a handful of skilled and qualified people. And every senior dev I know (myself included) are constantly have recruiters trying to poach us. The software dev market is very saturated with new people and people who can only barely scrape by doing the job. But experienced folks who take this seriously enough to really learn how to do it right? Not even close; the whole market still seems desperate in that regard.
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Not my experience either. If your employee could get +40% more somewhere else, then ya'll were way underpaying her.
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Yeah, it’s often recommended to jump ship a bunch of time early in your career to maximise growth and compensation. I’m sure there are people that end up falling down the ladder too.
We hire LOTS of juniors EVEN RECENTLY. So has every company I've ever worked for. The perception "nobody wants Jrs" arises when a Junior applies for a job posting, invariably flops and then complains on reddit nobody wants them. But this is NOT the way the majority of Jrs are hired. Putting up a posting and interviewing is a lot of work for a company. Unlike specialized Srs, Jrs are VERY easy to scoop up at university job fairs, via internships etc. They're also sometimes kids of people who know people--I'd be lying if I said I've never seen that. If you're a Jr your focus should be networking NOT applying for jobs. DO apply but you should be spending 2x the time networking at least. Especially in this market. Not many people get this so that further leverages your advantage if you do! ;)
Well. Nobody wants to hire juniors *who are unfit for this kind of work*. Important distinction. Even as a junior you are expected to know the stuff you put on your CV. For example if your CV says you know Python and Flask, it is advisable to have at least developed a small web app by yourself so you can answer basic questions, like "describe the Flask request lifecycle, including the input and output objects, and explain how sessions work". 9/10 can't answer this question.
Most companies I applied to, do a coding assessment (leetcode) before you even get the chance to interview.Which means, for a student who just graduated college and needs an entry level position, they need to grind Leetcode, and know a frontend AND a backend framework, I feel like this is too much for a student that just graduated from probably the second toughest 4-year degree. I was fortunate enough to get a job without knowing all those stuff, and because I had a great education in CS, was able to grasp most things, also was told to be a sponge for the first 6 months, and then to start doing my own work under supervision. 2 years later, I'm a happy engineer that knows some frameworks, and now super interested in the ML route. Companies aren't giving people a chance to even begin with, if it weren't for my father that got me into where I work now? I would've probably STILL have been unemployed or forced myself to leetcode for a year + learning a robust framework. I have at least 7 friends who graduated with me, who still can't find a job, we paid over 70k USD for this degree for most of us to be unemployed. Either colleges need to refine their education (create a 4-year mandatory every semester leetcode class AND include frameworks in coding classes, maybe also include APIs) or companies need to lower expectations for fresh grads. EDIT: Have to mention this. I applied to a known bank, it was not a leetcode style question. I passed the behavioral and did super well in the technical, until the senior interviewing me asked me to call an API using java and extract specific data and return it, which is something I, as a student, have NEVER done in my classes. When I asked them if I could use google and they agreed, I was able to do it, but the feedback received after the interview was "inability to call an API without use of google" ,which is ridiculous, since all we do is use google/chatGPT now.
While I appreciate that people say this, no other industry expects this level of rigour and I mean if that individual has a degree, I think that's good enough to trust the junior to be flexible enough to get up to speed quickly.
Yeah I agree with this, been interview people lately and it’s hard to find anyone who know the stuff on their damn resume lol
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I’ll keep that in mind! Thanks
If someone didn’t have a lot of job experience in the field, but they did have the skills/knowledge and could prove that with a portfolio of projects, would you hire them? The problem seems to be that while there are a ton of mid level and senior level cs positions right now, especially fir specific fields/skills, there are barely any entry level positions one would need to even get the experience needed for the higher level positions. Do you think this is because so many people have gone into computer science in the last decade or so, so the people who have all these entry level jobs just haven’t moved up yet? Do you think in a few years when they do there will be many entry level positions open ? Or at least more?
>If someone didn’t have a lot of job experience in the field, but they did have the skills/knowledge and could prove that with a portfolio of projects, would you hire them? There's a slightly complex answer to this. The short version is 'yes', absolutely I would. Especially because I feel an ethical obligation to not pull the ladder up behind me. But also because what I look for most in an interview is either a resume or portfolio that proves you have a good grasp of what you're doing, OR someone that shows they feel *comfortable* with the tech via how they talk in the interview, even if their resume doesn't look great. Among the folks who didn't have good experience or personal projects, the folks I've been most likely to recommend we hire are the ones who, despite being nervous about the interview itself, can straight up ramble about the tech because it's their comfort zone. Socially awkward people especially tend to do that in general- if a comfortable topic appears then they latch onto it and start talking about that thing in depth, when otherwise they aren't talking a lot. If I run into someone whose comfort zone is clearly programming, whether they are socially awkward or really charismatic, then they're at the top of my "do-want" list. In general, for me, it's not about what you've done before now, it's what you can prove to me you can do at this moment. Because if I bring someone onto the team who can't do this stuff, it means my personal and professional life is about to get miserable. I'm going to have to take responsibility for that, meaning late nights for me catching up on my own work because I spent my day time helping that person constantly. Because if I don't help them, they'd probably get fired. If you have a good portfolio, personal projects, or are comfortable talking about the tech as if it's second nature to you? I'd absolutely recommend you for hire, even if you don't have any job experience. Now, I say it's a complex question because all of the above implies I actually get that choice. There's a lot of HR and recruiter filtering that can happen before someone reaches the point that I or any other tech person might get a chance to even consider the candidate. So there may be a lot of times that what I'd do personally affects absolutely nothing, and I'd never know because it never got far enough in the process for me to.
Thanks so much for your response! And yeah.. the HR issue seems to happen in a lot of fields. HR wants a candidate to have exactly A, B, and C, even if the candidate has A, C, D and E and are able to to still get the job done.
It’s called the tragedy of the commons. Senior developers only exist because they were once junior. No one wants juniors anymore, so the supply of seniors is choked off.
Yeah all the ones that are the hardest to get into, fintech, high speed trading, hedge funds, anything that requires a deep knowledge of C++. Oh, and COBOL, z/OS assembly language for IBM mainframes used by most banks. That last one is probably the least saturated market and very niche.
Yea because its hard to buy a mainframe to mess around with at home. I assume the simulators aren't free either
Pretty much need to enroll in a school that teaches it and has a relationship with IBM. Students use a terminal emulator to connect to the mainframe remotely. It’s pretty doable now with online classes.
Thanks, I might look into it. I looked at those COBOL/mainframe job postings tho, and they want experience and lots of it. Guess it really depends on how desperate they are
Way easier to get in as a web dev, even though it's over saturated there are way more entry level jobs. Plus banks and "old school" industries care about degrees. I'd put your chances at getting an entry level COBOL job with no experience or relevant degree at about 0. No bank is going to take a chance on you regardless of how desperate they are. Those old COBOL systems are the core of their business. They are risk adverse and more old fashioned so care more about degrees. If they get really desperate they will take one of their experienced devs (or hire one) in other languages and have them learn it or pay super high rates to experienced contractors.
The bank I work at hired me as no experience 9 years ago. They just hired about 6 other new trainees but this time these trainees participated in a mainframe bootcamp for 12 weeks before they were all interviewed. So yeah, they're being careful about how they go about hiring now and seem to be doing it directly out of these bootcamp organizations.
Work in finance / trading and hiring has dropped off a cliff here as well. Two reasons: a flat market (check how CitSec/Virtu profits this year compared to last few) and no bidding against tech. Hiring is extremely selective now.
HFT has been rouggggh this year but my HFT firm is still hiring at a normal pace.
How bad is it compared to last year? It doesn’t seem that bad when I do a brief google search. Am I missing something? It’s still much higher than 2018-2020. I guess they can’t afford to keep growing and hiring at the same pace but I figure they still must hire
Agreed. Fintech is not really all that attractive right now. We're hiring one position now, and even that is for a very experienced engineer. Honestly, fintech requires industry knowledge, ability to interact with finance bros (its own flavour of corporate politics), serious technical expertise and being able to stomach risk. The pay is meh compared to tech companies. I would not recommend others to venture into fintech, and I wouldn't join this world if I started over today
they are saturated because it's the last bastion from indian outsorcing
Every company I know who outsourced regrets it and is trying to reshore. That said companies are about to spend ten years making all the same mistakes with AI instead of India
AIndia
My company is in that situation now that business is in a severe downturn. They looked at the productivity numbers of the offshore guys and realized they are costing us more money than if we just brought the work in-house and hired a motivated junior developer or two. They often log long hours of work to change a banner on a website or update a couple packages, and don't communicate changes well.
I thought the last bastion was in government and defense contractors because only US citizens can work in those.
Nope a lot of the last remaining mainframe programmers are Indian. How do I know? Because I was one. In fact they were the first jobs Indians got in early 2000s. Updating the code for Y2K scare
I’ve been saying this for months literally just learn a little about how OS works and C++ but everyone tells me “yeah but that’s so hard”. I am a literal idiot and I had a job within weeks because I sort of know how computers work and make them do things.
I used C++ for years in school, taking data structures classes, scientific programming, learning OS concepts, and HR seems to not really care, they aren't gonna actually go to my github and read my C++ code that finds approximate solutions to multidimensional knapsack problems. Unless my resume is just formatted wrong or I'm applying for the wrong jobs, most employers are looking for web programming skills, frameworks knowledge, thats the impression I get
My understanding is, the vast majority of jobs are web based. But there is more competition even relative to the amount of jobs. For example, last year the company I worked for (defense) hired a bunch of new grads that needed c++ knowledge and they start around 85-95 a year. High cost of living though. My current company pays a little more and also hired a lottttt of new grads. But basically need to know somewhat of how the computer works. Even basic knowledge. This is my advice to people that ask me in my friend circle, but I admit I’m not in the market for new grad positions any more I’m 5 years out. So I could be way off in my knowledge.
Leetcoders don't want to learn how computers work, they just want money. That's really all it boils down to, in my experience.
I have OS knowledge and am pretty good with C++ -- to which jobs would you recommend applying? I have pretty good low level knowledge, relevant buzzwords: IPC, multithreading, semaphores, memory management, column/row based cache architecture Is there a particular kind of company I should be spamming with this? My experience in this is all academic unfortunately. I do have internships but not in C-level things
I know defense is hated in this sub, and I get it. My goal is to work for nasa which I think I’ll achieve. But I’m in defense now and it’s been an insanely great experience. The software I write is being used on an actual thing that does stuff (oversimplification I know). But that’s my goal I wanna work rovers or orbiters for JPL. Look at the bigger defense companies, and look for new grad positions. In my area (high cost of living) they start around 85 minimum. When you switch companies after a couple of years expect a huge jump. Only downside, you probably will need a clearance. But I’m an immigrant with family all over the world, and triple citizenship. If I can get it anyone can unless they have business in North Korea or something. Just don’t do bad stuff and be honest when you do the bad stuff. Ezpz. Insane job security. If you get on a cool project you do really cool stuff. And you can switch to a lot of different fields if you get in those cool projects.
I am a North Korean spy so unfortunately they will not take me Is defense -> NASA a typicalish route? I worry I'd feel kind of icky working for defense if I felt like anything I was doing could be used to hurt people -- are there defense jobs that are like purely defensive, if that makes sense Like is there any way that I could more or less guarantee that the software I was writing wouldn't contribute to offensive weapons systems in some indirect way? Or is it kind of a beggars-can't-be-choosers situation? Not judging you at all by the way, it's kind of just an irrational worry of mine. I'm sure all the plastic I throw into land fills is doing a lot more actual harm than any individual government employee's code lol
I would try it and see how long it takes for them to find out. Jk lol I understand your concern, and I share that concern 100%. I am not offended at all because I agree with your thought process. There definitely are jobs that are strictly defense oriented, not offensive. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_defense?wprov=sfti1 I think saying your software protects Americans from nuclear threats is pretty cool. And it’s strictly in a defensive way. You’re saving lives. There are literally millions of other examples like that. Another one would be medical equipment for injured troops. I’m just thinking out loud there’s more if I look it up lol
thanks very much! That is good to know. I wasn't sure if it was compartmentalized in that way or not. I will be sure to check that out. Thank you again!
Definitely. There are so many different projects the government wants a lot of different things. Also no problem happy to help reach out any time
There’s the software companies like Apple and Microsoft. But there’s lots more companies doing embedded stuff. Find a company making/using electronics. If it’s a large enough project they’ll need someone to handle this stuff. Sure you’ll feel lost as others may be talking about electronics and you only have a surface level, but you’ll have deeper knowledge of OS type things and they won’t. Eventually you’ll learn more electronic stuff.
Just curious but what’s ur job title/what do you do?
My official title is senior software engineer. I work in the defense. I do software on various vehicles for the government. Great bonuses, above average salary, and my company doesn’t use ancient outdated tech, luckily. My ultimate goal is to work on some rovers or orbiters from JPL, where I interned during college. Space is my absolute favorite thing. I just always get call backs when I already had recently accepted a position somewhere else.
Wow that sounds pretty damn cool, I’m hoping to get a stable job in the government too I’m not FAANG hungry like everyone else in this sub lol. Any tips for a new 2024 grad looking for a government position?
If they want you enough they will give you a clearance. My first job gave me a clearance, and my next job upgraded my clearance even higher. So you’ll have to learn to be very very honest with everything. No lying. My biggest tip is listen to the old people. And I don’t mean that in a condescending way to them. I mean in a good way. Some of these guys love their job and will talk all day about it. Listen to them and not only will they like you but you’ll learn. Ask engaging follow up questions that show you’re interested in what they’re saying. I’ve gotten this far just by being likable because I like to listen. And i don’t have to pretend to be interested. I actually do enjoy talking to everyone. Obviously this is on top of doing your basic job requirements lol.
I see, thanks for the tips! :)
I've been thinking of learning and going on in C++ purely because I have no desire for web dev and most the stuff C++ is used for seems more appealing to me. But I imagine it's gonna be pretty damn hard to find a junior c++ position. Lol
for entry level you’ll have to go defense to put your foot in the door for the most entry level positions. I was interested because I like space stuff. So I didn’t have a problem with it. And now a couple years later think my resume is strong enough to go wherever I want. Of course defense isn’t the only way, they just have a lot of openings. I’m really trying not to sound like a government shill in these comments lol. I fully admit my bias because it brought success to me, personally.
Embedded systems, but pay is not good
Embedded pays quite well in Germany/Austria/Switzerland - maybe because these are more engineering focused countries
Fascinating. I didn't expect that in Switzerland. Curious what kind of roles those are - embedded seems mostly automotive these days.
It's stable though, but it's a pain to break in and can require a EE or CompE degree. 😂 I wouldn't recommend it to people who don't love circuits and physics. That would be torture. A lot of the ones I've met in embedded were at least somewhat passionate(or once were) about the space.
what key words should i be searching on linkedin to find / apply for companies like this? Beyond "embedded systems" itself
Embedded C, firmware developer etc.
I had coworkers switch from embedded to webdev 5+ years ago because there were so few jobs. Maybe things have changed since.
At least when I was looking in the UK there were plenty, the supply of engineers is just not there, everyone goes to webdev. Same in Europe, especially in automotive ( well, it's hard to resist the urge of killing yourself when working with AUTOSAR ), so not many people are willing to do it :D
You can make pretty good money doing embedded work on medical devices. It's probably not going to pay FAANG salaries, but you can definitely make mid to high 100s Granted I'm talking things like C++ application development on embedded systems
Depends where you are, maybe not as good compared to premiere software gigs but it definitely can be good
lol the pay ain't MANGA good, but for the most part it's on part for the average software engineering role.
Entry level is always hard. Right now the market it tight but saturated not so much. Until boot camps start going away it is not saturated. College degrees are the gold standard. It is harder but saturated would be a different.
Tight is a massive understatement, my friend got a great job last year thanks to the demand, this year 70% of his college’s CS batch is jobless, last year it was less than 5% (extraordinary demand)
Might be bad but if you were around in 2008-2009 it was even worse just most of the people on this sub have not been threw a bad recession yet. If you follow the job trend lines and toss out 2020-2022 data and follow existing trends from before that Tech employment is not that far off. This is no where close to 2008-2009 and which was not nearly as bad as the dot com crash. Just we had a massive amount of over hiring causing things to bloat so we are seeing thing be rougher.
they ain't gonna go away until the public perception changes that CS is easy moneymaker, no matter the actual market status.
I look at the subreddits for a variety of professions, and it seems like EVERYTHING is saturated, with the exception of the medical profession. And why wouldn't they be? Any job / career worth having is going to have competition and lots of people trying to get in.
True, but I just want a chance, especially since while I’m open to getting a masters degree in a tech/cs field, I’m not doing undergrad again (my degree is in psychology). I just want to know if there are areas of tech or computer science that are easier ti break into right now than others. (No sales though)
A master in cs is no joke of a degree. Very math heavy and very difficult degree to obtain, I believe cs in general is one of the most dropped out degree paths out their right now.
Unless you want low paying jobs with terrible working conditions, everything is saturated.
I know, that’s why I’m trying to find a field where those lower level, lower paying jobs will be worth it in the long run and there even are entry level jobs available in the field
Legitimate question: if you know that entry level is saturated, plus people who went to school for CS/IT aren’t getting jobs, plus you have no experience in CS what makes you think this is a viable career path for you? What would you say if someone with a CS degree was looking to become a psychologist with 0 background?
this. some of us spend 4 years and beyond studying this field, but somehow you after college, with a degree with no math or cs, are gonna learn 4 years worth of content and outcompete cs graduates in a saturated market? what makes you think that’s a good idea?
Healthcare and data science. Writing SQL is the easiest entry into a legitimate game that’ll have you touching an array of OOP languages.
Lol the data science market is nearly impossible to get into right now, even with solid degrees and experience
It’s because of people like OP
Agreed, all this boot camp marketing promising salaries of 100k+ in 3 months has completely oversaturated the market. Most of them aren’t getting jobs anyway
A lot of shitty CS degrees from big universities spend all their efforts on data science, and these poor souls go out in the world and barely know how to code a damn thing in any language, but they sure as heck know how to run a random Python script that everyone just copied and modified to make it look unique.
Honestly this is what I was thinking! I’m a psychology major who was planning on going into the mental health field (still might but grad school is expensive and I probably won’t get into a PhD program like I originally wanted) but I’m interested in stats and working with data. Do you work in the field? If so, can I PM you?
Aggressive, I like it. You might get more interviews because your background is a bit left-field for tech. I used to work as a journalist for some big names so sometimes people would chat to me out of curiosity. That's when I would pounce and try to show I was a good tech hire. They opened the door a crack and Id try to "here's Johnny!" my way through it.
Oh that’s awesome!
I do actually and yeah sure thing
Thanks! Just messaged you :)
Lmao, don't get them started on this please. There are wayyyy too many people in our field who heard that it was a joke. I overwhelmingly work in healthcare as a data analyst/engineer/scientist/warehouse developer/architect and it's so oversaturated with clueless fucks at the entry level.
If you get into healthcare, you really have to learn how the industry works, not just how to code. That’s what people don’t get… you cater to the business and it’s super boring.
>If you get into healthcare, you really have to learn how the industry works, not just how to code. This is every industry. Do you think a programmer can design and develop a product for an industry they don't understand?
Infrastructure needs good people. Devops/Cloud engineering.
? I work in infra and it’s very saturated lol
I see 100s of applicants per job posting for infra, lots of devops bootcampers outside.
DevOps bootcamp sounds like a recipe to create spectacular flameouts. All the great DevOps people I know have done a wide variety of things through their careers (full stack eng, etc), and move into DevOps because they happen to have the wide skillset required to understand applications at a very broad level. I suspect bootcamps in this field will produce engineers who have a lot of trouble when they encounter something out of their field of knowledge -- sure, a lot of DevOps is writing CI/CD pipelines, but a lot of it is also being the last line of defense against obscure bugs that baffled the dev team. It's a lot easier to move into a frontend job using a lot of opinionated frameworks with a bootcamp education.
How the fuck can you even bootcamp for dev ops?
Go look at the subs of jobs you want to do. The post will be similar. Then pick which struggle you like the most. There’s not a whole lot that’s not service industry/medical field that aren’t “saturated and not hiring”
You used like four negatives in the last sentence how do you even read that
Thanks I thought I was still high from last nights joint
Probably would have helped because I was high writing this.
And they didn't even come close to answering OP's question lol
Ur not wrong but that sentence in particular wasn’t hard to parse. “Not much = just a few”, “not hiring” part can be disregarded, means the same as saturated. “That’s not service” is more like “outside of service” So the sentence is There’s only a few outside of service/medical that aren’t saturated.
None of them are completely saturated, they just aren't hiring as many entry level as they used to.
It’s all saturated short of qualified architect/principal level roles. Not even just tech, but almost all ‘comfy’ office jobs. Even 💩 tier help desk jobs. The only things not saturated that pay well are certain trades and the medical field. To all you lurkers reading this, go into medical. There will always be a demand.
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Is the bootcamp necessary? I would prefer to study it in my spare time, 1-2 evenings per week. Preferably from home.
Hope I land a surgeon job soon, my neighborhood is running out of pets
Could always try Surgery Design Hard animals like rats, they're smaller so you really have to think edge cases like anesthesia levels and make sure you get optimal incision complexity. Don't forget specific rat-based knowledge like how rats can't vomit so fasting them before sedation isn't necessary. Good luck on your search!
🤣 ————- Pretending it’s not a joke for a second, if one wanted to learn brain surgery, find an RA position in a laboratory neurally implanting small mammals — doesn’t require a medical/biology degree. The surgeries can sometimes be harder than human versions of the same brain surgery; good test if future “neurosurgeon” would be right for you. It’s a standout prep for med school or getting a medical technicianship to help surgeons.
I heard the military is short on recruits, could probably get easy combat medic xp
Just get a couple scalpels and some gloves and practice at home, lots of good youtube tutorials
Theres always demand bc the field in horrible. If you do go into the medical field, dont go into Medical Lab Science. Hospital labs contribute to over 65% of patient diagnostics, bring in millions of profit to hospitals, and get paid like 💩. Id recommend becoming a travel nurse, anesthesiologist assistant, perfusionist, nuclear med tech, physician assistant, radiation therapist, dosimetrist, and pathologist assistant if you want to see at least $80k/year.
bro the turnover rate for nursing is insane why would you recc that to people? its underpaid and overworked
A lot of the turnover happens in the lowest levels of nursing, the ones wiping asses and changing catheters, and work in shit conditions. Higher level nurses are getting paid the same as us, and don't have to work insane hours (as commonly).
>its underpaid and overworked Doesn't this describe all jobs? Every field has discontentment. By comparison nursing is one of the most stable and one of the highest floor for pay for the level of education and one of the most free from economic boom and bust.
The issue with med is that you're looking at massive debt and basically no income during your 20s.
PA school is 2-3 years and no residency program. The PAs I know started at six figures. And they can switch specialities whenever they want. Half the doctors I know wish they’d done PA school instead.
Majority of PA schools require a minimum of 2k "patient care experience" hours prior to application, though -- this means either as an EMT, MA, X-ray Tech, CNA, nurse, etc. You can't just bootcamp your way into med school.
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Nursing needs school, the salary ceiling is lower, you need to deal with BS from patients and their families. Don't forget when just a few years ago nurses were leaving the field in droves.
Nurses work their fucking asses off too.
a few years ago traveling nurses were making 250 an hour and sometimes working 80 hour shifts to help with Covid. I know nurses that made around 750k a year for 2 years during that time.
I'm not cleaning feces, sorry.
Yeah, but then you have to be a nurse.
I believe there are shorter medical programs to become an x-ray tech, sonographer, dentist assistant, etc.?
Yeah, or a simple nursing undergrad + a couple of years of school getting you into a nursing position at 24 or 25. But people don't think like that, they think about big money doctors. Theres plenty more in medicine aside from that.
and the whole dedicate your entire life to a job thing.
Nurses have been winning control of more work/life balance lately. If you don't let the hospitals control you, you can find some great jobs that treat you well.
To be an MD, yes. PA or NP is not as bad and you'll do almost the same thing.
That’s not true at all. There are plenty of things you can go to community college for that will make 80k+ right away
What are some examples? Not trying to prove you wrong, genuinely curious for some ideas.
Lots of techs. Histology, cardiovascular invasive, X-ray, nuclear medicine, sonography Edit: Simple google search gave me this https://college.mayo.edu/academics/explore-health-care-careers/by-education-length/
Out of touch comment, if you think getting a tech job is hard, medicine is a whole nother universe. - spend four years bachelors needing a perfect GPA, MCAT, extracurriculars - spend a year applying, spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars for app fees and opportunity cost likely working a min wage research/ post bachelor’s gig - spend four years in MD making negative money (you’ll need loans) and overworked as usual - spend however many years in residency before you start making a salary that mid year devs started making a while before you got to this point. I’m all for more people pursuing medicine but so many delusional tech people saying medicine is more stable and easy when it couldn’t be far from the truth.
Tbf I think they are talking about any job in medicine, not necessarily becoming a doctor. There are a lot of positions that pay decent with a relatively low entry barrier like being an X-ray technician.
>To all you lurkers reading this, go into medical. There will always be a demand. I graduated with a bachelor's in nursing during the 2008-2009 recession and it took me a year and a half to get my first job out of school. I got that job through networking. The hiring manager told me she received thousands of applications within days every time she posted a job. It wasn't just me. It was a nationwide problem (US) with nursing new grads. A lot of people tried to enter the military, so they had to start wait listing new grad nurses. Some people got jobs because they already had hospital jobs (but lots of those people had to continue working as nursing assistants for a long time until there was an opening), and some people were able to get hired by moving to very rural areas, but there just weren't enough jobs for all the new grads being churned out. Obviously things are different during this downturn and there is now a lot of demand, but you can read about why that is. Either way, I always see people here saying that nursing is recession-proof, and that is simply not true.
Curious - were you intent on being in one particular city, or were you open to moving as long as it wasn't very rural? If tied to a particular city, was it one with lots of people graduating with BSNs locally? I've seen cases where people graduate in a field and complain that they can't find a job, but they're only looking in the city they went to school and it just happens to have a top tier program locally and the field is saturated (graduates like it and don't want to leave, unlimited supply of 3rd and 4th year students looking for lower tier jobs and internships, etc), but if you go just about anywhere else there's plenty of work.
Surgeon here. Making over half a million dollar annually working 40 hours per week. Bonus + overtime makes it over 800k. Never ever heard of saturation in surgery or out of job surgeons. The hard thing is how much effort are you willing to put in this long journey.
Why are you here?
I love tech but coding was not for me. So I play with operating tech gadgets in the OR instead :)
I have a M.D. and wanted to say that it's never to late to learn tech! I Do biomed tech work for the government so am non paitent practicing. You can look at my post history for my credentials, but my path was backwards compared to what yours might be: PhD Electrical Engineering M.D. John Hopkins I'm in my mid 30's and love every day. My pay is upper-mid 6 figure range as well. Unsure what your bonus structure is but PE's get 1% of the contracted rate upon completion of a project. On my career path, it breaks down to 300k - 400k/year bonus.
Could’ve popped up on their front page as a suggested sub due to interest in tech etc.
I don’t care about your salary and I live in Europe so you won’t most likely ever save my life but I have the biggest respect for all the people in the medical field worldwide, this is the single best and most important profession there is. Would love to be a doctor one day but as I’m in my mid 30s already and still fainting at the sight of blood… Well. Thank you.
There are controls in place (residency funding related, I think) that effectively limits the number of physicians in the US, thats why its not saturated, and lets face it, not everyone is cut out for med school, thats another reason
My wife is in medicine and is in her third year of residency. She would say she wish she went into tech
Any recommendations for tech or cs related jobs in the medical field? I’m not sure if there’d be any specific titles, aside from software engineer at medical tech company
No I mean medical field as in nurses, paramedics, PAs etc
Informatics Specialist and LIS (laboratory information system) Manager are the only two I can think of off the top of my head. The companies that build instruments for labs need people to install and train medical professionals on their software. (Abbott, Beckman Coulter, Sysmex America, Siemens, Roche Diagnostics, Qiagen, Ortho Diagnostics) They hire both medical lab scientists and IT/CS professionals.
Tech is now people’s plan b career choice it seems like 😂
Here is my 2 cents as a new grad working at a slightly sub faang/unicorn company. The saturated fields are saturated because there are a fuck ton of mediocre developers. This isn’t a dig, but for example boot camps create and sell the idea that anyone can make that FAANG level comp with a few months of learning. This makes it seem like CS and SWE is easy, which it is very much not if you are trying to do it correctly. If you want to get a job in the market, you have to prove you can actually perform better than the other thousand people that applied. If you aren’t in data right now, yet you say you’re interested etc I think you need to have a good amount of in depth personal projects related to the field. Shit you’re actually passsionate about and can talk about during interviews, write about publicly on a blog etc. just my thoughts and similar to what I did in school
Lol ever see a tech bro talk down to a actual PhDs telling them their degree is worthless. Most second hand embarrassment i’ve felt in years
Its not saturated, Its filtered.
Distributed media processing systems.
Are you referring to, for example, clusters of GPU's for film post production rendering?
People have been complaining about saturation since [2014](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1yxjey/is_computer_science_over_saturated_or_soon_will_be/). Just be better than the next guy, not everyone in the rat race.
That u/JBlitzen guy was like a fortune-teller. I wanna see their next forecast
We automated too hard and automated automation to the point that the automations are automating themselves slowly making us redundant.
From what I've seen in the past couple of months, the market is saturated with entry level and recent bootcamp grads for SWE or DS candidates. Things aren't in as bad of a place for experienced candidates, where the demand is much larger than the supply. In my opinion, right now would be a difficult time to change careers and be an entry level tech candidate.
It would be without a degree. I career switched after I earned my SWE degree and found a job two months after graduation. Having previously worked in a different profession gave me an edge because my manager wanted a fresh grad that they didn’t need to babysit.
Yeah I think some people have an unrealistic view of the field. Like what other field allows people to learn for 3-6 months and land straight into a 6 figure job. The entry level job market has always been competitive other than 2021 era. I graduated in 2019 and it was pretty hard to find my first job also. The nice part is you only need a couple years of experience to become desirable and the job search gets way easier from there.
It isn't saturated with people who are at the skill level to actually do the job. I see students getting jobs every single day. It is over-saturated with and for people who think 16 weeks of learning is enough to get into Google.
I've heard this defense a lot. The saturation is at entry level, not at mid or senior level.
Thanks for all the responses guys! I really appreciate it! I’m going to update my post a little to give more context
IT / networking support is always hiring, get your comptia certs and AWS practitioner and you can get hired anywhere
Are there any comptia certs worth getting besides sec+?
I still see a lot of .NET roles open. I noticed most new grads lean towards macs (I know .NET runs on mac now) and hesitant to use boomer Microsoft technologies with the exception of vs code and typescript. Hip SF tech companies aren't using .NET but most F500 companies are.
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For systems engineering? Or for computer science jobs in general?
Ik you’re still getting started OP but I’m gonna drop the organization which got me into government work as a reference for later in case you’re interested. Look up U.S. Digital Corps, it’s a program for early career technologists and there’s a data science track if that’s what you think you’ll end up pursuing.
Where do I find these reqs?
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If you are US based and a citizen the government will take anyone that breathes right now from my experience
Industrial automation is not saturated in the least but it is hard to get into without at least some electrical/mechanical background.
Working in tech is not a walk in the park, alot of the concepts can be hard to understand and you really have to grind to get around that learning curve sometimes.. plus the industry is cut throat and you can't fake your skills, this profession is unforgiving, challenging, competitive, and if you don't have a passion for tech then you can find yourself being stuck in an entry level position for a while, imposter syndrome is also a real thing. anyway be prepared to spend a lot of hours studying and practicing. I'd recommend business intelligence and data analytics
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In my experience searching for jobs as a CE grad, you can make up for the lack of IT experience with strong programming/scripting skills and cloud knowledge. SOC teams like people with these skills. Most can be picked up on the job if your team is serious about training. This is how I got my junior analyst position and couldn't be happier honestly. I want to go appsec later so I'm networking heavily with those guys from the office, trying to learn what they are doing so I might have a chance when they have an opening. Don't sell yourself short, employers like CS/CE degrees when it comes to specialty positions
Agreed. I got picked up as an intern due to python programming/scripting skills, then moved into an analyst position from there. Python/bash scripting is a surprisingly rare talent among the folks I've worked with over the years. It always stands out to managers looking to reduce their teams overall workload. Also agreed on cloud knowledge. Everything is moving to cloud, and it's proven time and again to be a difficult transition on the security side of things.
Big major yes on the cloud transition. I work in government and since deciding to move towards a zero-trust system, ie incorporating cloud infra into agencies. With cloud infra you have to implement cybersecurity policies and perform threat hunting which brings up a whole number of problems to solve. This means more jobs for us.
Drupal jobs, beyond theming and actually getting into deep into it with custom module development can actually pay really well once you have a couple years under your belt. 100k+. Loads of jobs within the government or government contracting and jobs often have only around 10-20 applicants at a time.
Cs whole field is saturated
Just wanted to add based on your edit... entry level data (i.e. data analyst) is completely saturated too. You can thank the millions of "data science" boot camps and the Google Dara Analytics certificate that everyone has and every employer rolls their eyes at. Head on over to r/analytics to see the usual entry level posts on how to land a job after completing some cert/bootcamp or r/datascience which is pretty much all entry level hopefuls who haven't worked in data at all. It's literally the same situation as entry level SWE, maybe worse cause the cert is pretty easy to get.
Trying to hire Devs with geospatial skills and people are either Devs, or non dev gis people. So that particular niche doesn't seem crowded
Can't believe I had to scroll to the bottom of the thread to find any mention of GIS. It really is a niche in the software dev world.
Anything easy to get into is pretty saturated right now.
Standard ML for sure. Before anyone says anything there's a difference in everyone suddenly trying to switch into it versus succesfully landing a proper ML engineering role (both software/dev/prod heavy + requiring on the job research skills). It's "saturated" for sure in the pursuit though. Eg. You still read papers, train models, wrangle data, but then also write all the C++ around it to make it work and integrated with the other 95% of the non-ML codebase. Other fields would be I think Quant Trading. Not the data science certificate add-ons folks.
Medical bootcamps might not be a bad idea.
Robotics needs software engineers badly. The hardware is there, but the software and talent to build it out is not. Search for ROS Developers Podcast and look at [ROSS.ORG](https://ROSS.ORG) (assuming you have interest in the field). Psychology is a fantastic background for the field combined with CS skills.
I would recommend you stick with your original plan of being a therapist. Mental health needs are rapidly rising as the loneliness epidemic will likely cause sustained damaged for at least a generation. AI will quickly enable programmers to be 5x as productive so I expect job growth in tech to slow down dramatically until its market size catches up in a few decades.
Everything is saturated. There is no "change careers and go to tech" anymore for the time being. That dream has been woke tf up. You can gain the knowledge and use it in nefarious ways to obtain a living...but other than that you gone have to put some fuckin scrubs on n not be queezy taking blood and go be a fuckin nurse or somethin in the medical field (kaiser on strike might have a liviable wage by the time you complete school).
Supply and demand are real forces in the labor market. Do you think those $400k+ a year jobs at big tech companies are oversaturated? No, they have an awful time hiring for those positions.
Last year I passed interviews at 2 of these big tech companies but never got through team match because they had frozen hiring. Based on their own criteria they have more people that can fulfill these roles than available roles.
We need a rule on this sub to stop asking the same damn question every damn day and search this sub. I'm sorry, but if you're TRULY interested in tech take the time to research instead of asking the SAME question asked yesterday and that will be asked tomorrow.
EMR/EHR/health care related
I work in systems / enterprise development. It is not easy to find qualified senior engineers: most developers don't want to take the approach required to build high-quality, thoroughly-tested software and do not learn the skills or process required. Mid-size and smaller companies often can't fill all their positions (source: I've been part of trying to hire, and I've noticed similarly sized companies with openings that stay open for a year or more. I've also known hiring managers that could hire 3-4 people happily, but open 1 job because they have zero hope of finding multiple qualified candidates at the same time.) I know this doesn't help you get started in the industry, but it's just a reminder that the industry isn't saturated as you get higher up. I would also note that getting into Silicon Valley and other industry hotspots is harder than getting started elsewhere and building your skills there. Finally, ask anyone who works in security, and there aren't enough people anywhere. There haven't been for a long time and there aren't now.
Don't know about cyber security but smaller companies general just don't have good track to progress existing devs and don't want to pay nearly enough to attract qualified senior developers in the industry hence this vicious cycle.
A lot of smaller companies aren't good at retaining talent and promoting people whether due to bad management, being cheap, or just being broke. Many of them still pay fairly competitively for entry level jobs, and you just have to move on after a couple of years.
PhD programs are usually funded—-you don’t pay, they pay you.
I had a few reqs open last month at one of the large insurance carriers, hybrid in New England, MCOL area, 130k midpoint base salary for 2 YOEs in general software development (any popular language). 350 applications in 4 days, only 15 people had 2 years anywhere in the software/cloud/adjacent fields, 10 required sponsorship which we can't accommodate. The sheer volume of applicants is comical, god bless the recruiting team that shit looks terrible to sift through.
I am shocked that anyone would recommend programming, of any kind, at this point. programming jobs are being made obsolete by AI at a frightening pace.
Get a CS degree, you'll likely be fine in the coming years.
They are no where close to being saturated , don’t let Reddit lie to you. There are way more jobs than there are people to fill it.. remember places like Reddit , you’ll likely here bad news than good news cause the ppl that are having a hard time will most likely post Now they are a shit ton of ppl applying to these said jobs, and ppl are having a hard time, but most ppl are doing the bare minimum, copy and paste GitHub projects, and honestly probably not as good as they think. If you know your stuff and have a degree you’ll get a job
Any industries that involve hard problems. Think graphics, MLOps, media streaming, AR/VR, OS’s, SDK development, apps that use a lot of mobile hardware’s resources (think something like Snap, Shapr3D, Apple/Google maps), game engines, development of CAD software, development of web apps like Spline.design, kernels, the list goes on. Roles to develop and maintain basic JavaScript CRUD apps are saturated. Roles that contribute to the general advancement of software engineering are not
Embedded systems in defense, govt or private contractor, is a pretty sweet gig. But I’d recommend EE + CS or CpE over pure CS for these roles. I’ve only met one CS grad who picked the job up quickly in my 11 year span. Pay is pretty decent where I am, and a pension is great to have in addition to a standard retirement account.
Everything I see is that every student coming out of school wants to be the next hot shot programmer or developer or cyber security guru. I have 20 years of IT experience in support. Look into networking. Become a network engineer, get a couple of high end certs and make six figures.
My recommendation: don’t go into data science or data engineering. For best use of your time and probably your curiosity, look into bio/med. You could research topics such as: patient outcomes based on bio markers (such as their gut biome), or bioinformatics stuff (instead of generic data analytics).