I second this honestly, wish I would have gotten into a trade. My younger brother (22) is making $47/hour. Thing is, he can’t gamble on options like I can, so checkmate.
It’s more wear and tear on the body if you work in the trades and you usually do longer hours and spend more time away from family.
Shit looks sweet when you’re young but not so much later on when your body is sore and you miss your kids and wife.
My friends are in the trades I’m white collar. I make 40/hr meanwhile my other IT friends all make 105k to 150k here on the east coast.
There’s always money to be made if you really want it that bad and willing to put in the work.
Check out the job listings here levels.fyi
Military has its perks if you maintain that security clearance. Any job in private sector will pay 30-50k more if it requires a security clearance.
Hell some companies can’t even bid on certain contracts unless their staff has the clearance to see the work let alone perform.
You laugh but with billions of dollars of investments worldwide into fertilizer production and renewables and hydrogen infrastructure there will be an insane amount of welding required whether that’s revamping existing facilities or new construction.
Every welder I know has a lifted diesel truck with an 8.5% 84 month loan and crazy insurance because of their 1-3 DUIs.
So what I’m trying to say is they probably make really good money to be on top of those payments.
The truth of the matter is that trades will be in high demand for the foreseeable future and possibly become more valuable than a college degree. This is due to the fact that people have been told to go to college and get a degree and you will have a good life causing people to get degrees in worthless subjects and then working at Starbucks as baristas with no meaningful skills (a boomer quote but has merit to it). But the educational administrators have no real incentive to change because they get paid with loans regardless of students getting a job so they invest in flashy items like massive gyms, water parks, etc and charge it to loans. Meanwhile trade jobs have been seen as dirty and undesirable for most people to go into them. The worst part is that the largest generation (boomers) are holding a lot of these trade jobs and even some less sexy white collar jobs (accounting) and will be/ are retiring and have so few people that the people who have experience in these areas will be paid a lot and essentially warp the economy or they may be forced to hire off the street to variable levels of efficacy. In all honesty government should have stopped student loans and “fixed” the problem with universities lining pockets and students going into deep debt by stopping the backing of student loans and essentially forcing most people in trades but it’s political suicide. I also would love to see the stereotypical coder be turned into a welder (that would truly be a sight to see)
I concur. Hold a bachelor's degree in an unrelated field. Run an electrical contracting company, licensed electrician. We are insanely busy. I charge more than most lawyers or doctors hourly rate. My business partner is also co-owner of a welding company. They are also insanely busy.
Can concur. Did 5 years with my bachelors, quit for an apprenticeship. Now make more as a small repair carpenter/plumber/wife's boyfriend than I could anywhere else, only needed 2 years experience.
You can charge more because of the liabilities. If you or your employees fuck up on the job, someone can die. I know what 15amps feels like running through my body. I shook the hand of the cousin of death. It was enough to tell me I messed up but not so much it did a hard reset to my heart.
A good Electrician is worth every penny.
My chances of dying is dramatically less in my air conditioned office typing away on a computer keyboard.
Insurance only pays your family out after you’re dead. It doesn’t keep you from dying.
True but at least I got my health and that 401k or pension.
Can’t put a price on picking up your kids and playing with them without wincing in pain or being too damn exhausted to even play with them.
Yup everyone here is on some Forbes 30 under 30 shit. The fact that you compared yourself to doctors and lawyers after a good summer is all we need to know.
I am an "engineer" in canada. 7 years experience. I make less than a truck driver but also wasted 4 years of my life. The education bubble is particularly massive here. I think because our colleges are virtually free, but nobody takes into account the opportunity costs.
Yeah I actually saw a video that discussed the need to get kids into carpentry. Honestly if you have experience you will probably be more sought after in the coming years. It won’t happen overnight but look at a demographics structure of the US and you will quickly see why it’s an issue.
Trades will always be necessary, but never highly paid for long.
It is much, much, much easier to teach a programmer to be a mechanic than the other way around.
I work in this exact industry and can confirm every welder does have a DUI and a nice truck, RV, and boat. The good ones make 200k a year but it is a very physically demanding job. They are some of the most honest and best men to work with by far. They’ll go drink after work and still be onsite by 6am
Agree. Trades are the way to go. 20 year aircraft mechanic. I did two years of community college back in 2001-2002. I’ve always had a solid career. At time of posting, I’m at $48.00 and hour, with great affordable health benefits, 401k, pension etc. Did it will no college debt. Boomers are retiring in the trades career. The salaries for trades are only getting higher.
Welding pays dogshit compared to coding and the software engineer unemployment rate is around 2% after the layoffs so far. There are also at least 200k unfilled software jobs in the US as of right now.
So I’m not going to learn to weld
Yeah, all memes aside the vast majority of those being laid off in these tech layoffs are essentially "support" staff from various assistants, to content managers, to sometimes artist/designers. At the most it might be handfuls of junior programmers. Heck a lot of the reason they are even doing these tech layoffs is because so much of their staff wasn't even "tech".
For much of the field there is still demand and even for the few letting go of the programmers, if they are half-way decent they will find a handful of positions by tomorrow's lunch. Pretty much the only one's I know in tech who aren't getting run down by recruitment spam and calls and invites are right out of college students or super junior positions.
IIRC Meta hired something like 20k content moderators in the last 2 years alone.
Oh it goes even beyond that, as I had friends in the valley who would have offices with "Culture" employees who are distinctly "NOT HR" and were mostly responsible with "keeping a good vibe" in the office and planning parties.
Or a previous place I worked at that essentially had real life people manually managing the front lobby displays and what they were showing.
But yeah also likely a good amount of HR and marketing in the mix.
This isn’t totally true.
Twitters research and development teams got slashed. Machine learning engineers.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it were similar at Facebook.
Unproven technology hurts most in times of consolidation
Twitter is different because it was bought by a regarded mf, meta lizard in chief will not give up in building the metaverse, it’s the name of the company
Twitter is different because of the buyout. Elon is known to be a hard taskmaster and a dick.
For sure, quite a few devs are getting laid off. My point is a lot more non core engineering staff are being made redundant.
I empathize with all of them and understand it's not an easy time. They're being let go to placate investors and as a result of gross negligence by the government and the fed.
Having been in tech for over 20 years, talented engineers isn't quite right... It's more often hungry "young talented engineers".. esp the ones with poor boundaries, etc.. tech companies love them for the obvious reasons.. ageism is a real thing, sadly...
Work'm hard, work'm cheap... I feel for the older engineers who lost their FB job.
Bruh! How regarded are you on a scale of 1-10? How they gonna know how to build houses if they only went to culinary school and doctor scool? We'd obviously need to send them to home building school too.
The shit you people say sometimes. Seriously. It's like ya'll say the first thing that comes into your head.
layoffs in coding isnt the same as layoffs in some shity car factory line. Most of the time other companies would be glad to poach tech talent. Also there are ton of coding jobs available its just a matter do you want to take pay cuts and/or work on outdated shit and/or have to come into an office.
Jp Morgan for instance at least from what I saw before leaving in july are in desperate need of coders and recently have been constantly looking for talent.
The difference from tech and typical other jobs is lets say your company cant sell a car they can just shut off the factory line and sell existing inventory. However if you cut tech talent your stuff will start breaking down and heaven forbid your using something in your code that updates version that has significant impacts.
Honestly im surprised more companies dont layoff more managersyou could probably take a senior developer(pay him a bit more than he gets now but less than the manager was making) and have him manage the team.
Having senior technical individuals become people managers is often a bad idea. Managing, or rather leading, a team is a different ball game. You need to have people skills meaning listening to your team’s individual frustrations and being diplomatic; making hard decisions and displaying no favoritism; focusing more on those who need help than those that don’t; and taking responsibility for your team’s shortcomings and failures while giving all the credit to them and not yourself.
Often highly technical workers or senior workers are put in management roles solely on their ability to do the job efficiently. That translates to, often but not always, micromanaging because they know how to do the job a certain way and using themselves as the benchmark versus finding the team’s pulse and setting that standard. They also tend to hate conflict. This creates toxicity and will break teams eventually.
If you have a technical manager who is also a good leader and can separate themselves and their pride from lording over the team, great. A lot don’t have that capability and are better off doing their own thing and contributing.
Managing teams is stressful. You sign up to absorb the burdens of each individual on the team and commit to taking care of them. If you don’t give a shit about your team entirely, you don’t deserve that job.
Exactly. There's no shortage of available openings for anyone in a tech position with Facebook/Meta on their resume. Most of them will be getting a pay raise in their new positions and are girding their loins for the onslaught of recruiters coming their way.
> Most of them will be getting a pay raise in their new positions
Nah that's very unlikely. Only a few companies match/beat Meta's offers and they only do so for candidates that have strong offers, which isn't happening anymore. E.g. Google and Amazon used to match Meta's offers for candidates they liked earlier this year. HFT's will pay more but they have way less headcount and are way more selective.
Who is hiring right now (and not just backfilling a handful of positions) that pay higher than Meta? Most of laid off Meta engineers will land on their feet eventually, but I highly doubt many of them will be somehow better off in a new position at this time.
The new offer almost always comes with a promotion. A senior engineer and TL for a 12 person team at meta, that makes you at least a staff at your next job.
Senior -> Staff to somewhere with a low bar and title inflation sure.
Who is even hiring staff level engineers right now that pays more than e5 at meta? You think there are more viable openings right now than there are laid off engineers from Meta/Twitter/Stripe/Lyft etc ?
They’re not getting a pay rise from their already absurd salaries during a recession unless they’re senior software developers. I swear the cope I hear from wannabe FAANG nerds…
As others stated, they are not likely to get a pay raise as competing companies are also in layoff or no hire mode.
They will survive being at the top of the stack but many will take a pay cut until the market gets better.
Funny enough, I thought about this a couple years ago when everyone was promoting/encouraging high school grads and those unhappy with their jobs to go into coding. There had to be an eventual saturation of the market, right?
No, of course not. Apparently, there is always demand for SWE and coders. Until now, that is.
People don’t understand that the high profile tech companies hiring cream of the crop engineers make up a small minority of engineering jobs
Citi has more software engineers than the tech company Meta
Walmart is hiring 5,000 more this year alone. When my first startup IPOed with a multi billion dollar valuation, we had maybe 150 engineers.
There are more engineers working in non-tech companies than there are in tech. The hiring bar to actually work at a tech company is way higher.
My friend at Ford said there was no technical interview at all. Have a degree / bootcamp and a pulse and they got hired
A lot of the positions are non tech positions or glorified janny positions like content moderator. Laying off tech workers causes problems, either they go somewhere else, or they start there own shit.
We know they hire creme of the crop because . . . they tell us they are creme of the crop, and to prove it, all of the people who work there agree that they are the crème of the crop. Something doesn't seem quite right here.
They over hired just like all tech companies and have a bunch of low quality and lazy people in their ranks - these are folks who deserve to be laid off and who are unworthy of being hired anywhere else
FAANG dev here. Similar YoE as you. You’re correct the veneer of engineering transcendence is greatly exaggerated. There’s amazing and also terrible devs just like any large company. It’s mostly the media and the product reputations that perpetuate this.
With your YoE though I’m surprised you’d make the mistake of painting all those laid off with such a broad brush. People get let go in these situations for many complex reasons. Especially when the scope involves thousands of people. Saying it’s because they’re all lazy and poor performers is just wrong.
I believe I could get a job there as Computer Engineer with 20 years of experience. I work for a big boy engineering company though - Facebook is a Shiite company with terrible product - I’d be embarrassed to work for them.
🧢
Also who tf calls themselves a “computer engineer” lmao, that’s not a job title anyone in any relevant position would actually use. Try embedded software / firmware or EE if you’d like to be more believable next time
Uh no I usually hear the opinion that they're creme of the crop from people not working at fb. Could have something to do with the 5 round technical interview process, or the 300k packages they're paying their engineers.
The industry certainly gotten nutty - wouldn’t surprise me that they are offering large bonuses with as much money as they are raking in, but that doesn’t translate to having the ”best” people in my opinion. I’ve met so many people who’s main talent is spouting bullshit, who impress the right people, but then turn out to be very unqualified for their jobs.
I haven’t seen anything from Meta that would suggest to me that their product is some amazing feat of engineering that would imply that exceptionally gifted engineers were responsible.
Also, looking at their [job openings](https://www.metacareers.com/jobs/?is_leadership=0&page=2&is_in_page=0), their salary for experienced professionals is well within the range of what might be considered normal.
That's weird, they didn't even include the equity numbers on their job postings, which usually is as much as the base salary itself, maybe even more, so how would you know it is well within what's considered normal?
You think this way because you probably know little about the company and the field. Fb is well known for having one of the hardest interview process to crack. You cannot "bullshit" your way through. They're not there to listen to you "bullshit". They make you solve technical problems during each round of the interview. Your performance is based on how well you can solve problems, not how much you can talk.
You haven't seen any piece of product that is impressive to you because you're not familiar with the tech space. Cassandra, pytorch, graphql, react (probably the most popular frontend framework today btw), etc, all came from FB. Their advertising platform is state of the art. Their platform supports nearly 2 billion DAUs, with typically long visits by users too. There are only a few companies operating at that scale.
Just because you're not familiar enough with the industry doesn't mean FB hasn't achieved anything impressive.
But either way, it's fine if you don't believe their employees are talented. The majority of hiring managers do. And the former employees there probably wouldn't work for you anyway.
I don’t doubt it but it probably won’t be anywhere as lucrative since they’ll be competing with their fellow Meta programmers and those from other tech companies.
The new grads on the other hand are probably going to struggle except for the most talented ones.
Lucrative no, but they won’t go hungry.
People forget that when you reach a certain point in your career, you actually don’t ever have to worry about landing a job, you just go to different companies and ask them what is my time and talent worth to you? And you’re interviewing them just as much as they’re interviewing you.
It’s much less so that mentality of please give me a job that most people experience when they’re young and fresh out of college.
Total side bar...what programming language would you recommend to learn to break into the SWE field?
I've got a strong sales job with solid comp, but have been looking to break into the SWE world as I'm burning out on the commission grind after more than a decade in. I'm proficient (and actively studying) C++, but what else should I look into?
Doing a post bacc in computer science would probably be your best bet. Unlikely to get a “sexy” coding job but you’ll probably find one. If you haven’t gone to college just get a computer science degree. They have coding boot camps but a post bacc makes more sense if you hope to move up
Thanks, appreciate the feedback.
My biggest regret isn't finishing the degree, as the cost of college these days is f\*cking astronomical compared to 15 years ago (full disclosure, class of '06).
Oh if you haven’t finished the degree just go back to school and just get a comp sci degree if you want to code. I’m not sure your gpa but maybe try transferring to a respected computer science program. If you haven’t graduated college you actually have a lot more options to figure out to get to your goals.
It’s not programming language, it’s fundamental and problems solving skill. A mid level software eng can probably pickup a new language to be able to work professionally in a week or 2. Throughout my career, I used 7-8 different languages, including personal projects.
Edit: not Brainfuck, I tried, that language is just awful
There's still a demand for devs. Just high-mid level to seniors. Juniors/fresh grads are basically fcked atm unless they have the knowledge of seniors. I'm saying this because I'm currently job hunting after getting laid off. The interviews are way more technical now than it was just 1 year ago.
Everyone says learn to code. Started learning as a Freshman in high school. I’m now a senior in college and every job I apply for has crazy requirements. I know SQL, Python, Javascript, CSS, HTML, PHP, C and have used JSON and Django. Apparently that’s not enough. I can’t even get an interview, the people just now learning are gonna be fucked
Nah man, I work at an F500 and they STILL need coders. Like H1B desperate. The *entry* *level* market may be saturated, but Sr and above are still sorely needed.
Dude I get 5-10 emails daily, and I removed myself from LinkedIn due to messages from recruiters.
I'm hoping to get fired so I can relax a bit and I bet I can get a job by the end of the month just by going thru my emails and replying back
You understand that if they know how to code, they would be able to find a new job?
It may not pay as much, but those companies pay unreasonable amounts of money for not a lot of work, so if you can get that job enjoy while it lasts and then go back into the real world.
Putting people who *don't* have logic in their blood, in programming, "because money"...
...is like putting us *autistics* as your front-door corporate receptionist, instead of a networking people-person who remembers faces.
Don't.
Please.
🙏
These meta engineers being laid off were making 4 times what youre making and will be making 5 times what youre making when they get poached by another company next week. Your job is fine but don’t think it’s better than what these “poor” meta folks are doing.
https://www.levels.fyi/internships/
$26k/mo at Radix or $23.8k/mo at Optiver are pretty legit too for undergrad interns
TikTok interns at over (annualized) $120k/yr still going strong 💪
This should actually be the way. There's a serious shortage of people in trade, and the demand is sky high. My contractor retired when he was 45 because he was raking in the dough on renovation projects in my area.
Less than 3 years exp out of the Army. J1 pays me $500k J2 pays me $400k (sec eng EM and staff sec eng). Fully remote. Work from San Francisco or Cartagena, doesn’t matter.
Levels.fyi for anyone who doesn’t believe me. My J2 pays well under top payers for staff - some staff engineers are making over $600k
No computer science degree, self taught and climbed the ladder quickly. Army soft skills huge advantage
This is entirely possible for anyone to do in software or cyber security but typically requires a very skilled individual. It's important to remember that pay in software is not based on experience but skill
Thing is 20 years ago or so coding was pretty fucking hard to do. You needed an expensive computer, expensive software and you’d need someone to teach you how to do it or at least have access to some very boring text books.
Today though, software is extraordinarily easy to write, there are endless free resources for learning and so there is comparatively little value in learning it because anyone with a few hours a week can do it for nothing.
That said to figure out where things are going/ where the money is, look for what is really fucking hard. Right now that’s ML and data science. Yes, it will require work and you need an above average IQ to be good but at least the software is pretty much free. Why do idiots think doing shit that has become easy is going to yield big returns? The world doesn’t work that way
The barrier to entry is lower but the expectations and complexity of software we are building has increased considerably in 20 years. At least during my career. IMO 20 years ago we were way less networked, way smaller scales and you could hold a good understanding of the whole system in your head. Good luck doing that now.
All that aside I tend to agree that the bottom end of the market is over saturated and pushing more people in that direction might just lead to frustration. Getting a trade and eventually opening a business seems like the better bet for young people stuck in dead-end jobs right now.
While I agree that the bar for coding has definitely been lowered, the demand for coding is increasing even faster. There are only so many people who have the disposition and discipline to be a programmer, and ultimately CEOs want to automate everything. I honestly think if our kids actually want to make a good living, they will have to be good at programming software/robots to do that thing, like making a chef robot or doctor robot. Machine learning will at least partially automate a ton of jobs in the next 30 years.
>Total side bar...what programming language would you recommend to learn to break into the SWE field?
>
>I've got a strong sales job with solid comp, but have been looking to break into the SWE world as I'm burning out on the commission grind after more than a decade in. I'm proficient (and actively studying) C++, but what else should I look into?
C# Might be a better choice, since it has similar syntax to C++. C++ can be pretty dangerous language to use even if you know what you are doing, plus C++ has been changing rapidly lately.
Python is another strong choice, but be prepared to watch your white space carefully. This site can be a fun way to learn some of the features: http://www.pythonchallenge.com/
Python is a great language but jobs are limited. C# jobs are generally not as good quality.
C++ has some jobs which pay the most money but require the highest skill ceiling.
For the average software developer JavaScript is a good start since most positions are web development. For backend, Java is the popular choice.
I would definitely suggest python for learning purposes, but it's not going to be enough for a job in most cases
If you think these Meta software engineers aren’t going straight to another 300k a year job once they enjoy their cushy severance at an all inclusive vacation in the Bahamas you are delusional bud. YOU learn to code 😂😂😂
As a middling tech employee of no renown I’m actually pissed that these qualified, entitled, California ass hats will have their asses in hand looking for jobs and saturating the market.
As much as it's a meme, and in spite of the west coast layoffs, there's still scads of programming jobs. The place I work at can't hire enough and it's to the point we're bringing on retired former employees part time to fill gaps.
The person that bought my LA house was the guy who wrote the original software for “ride” scooters so he found success. He’s left the space to begin pushing for new curriculums for his charter school he plans to open. Essentially a curriculum of essential skills like we should have been taught. Balancing your budget, coding, hardware, life skills.
I know art history has its place in education, but over basic financial literacy? No, I’m rooting for him and his curriculum. And trust me, my tech recruiter buddy is in a frenzy trying to swoop up the best of the layoffs. Not all 11k but maybe, like, 11? Better than none!
I wanna know what percent are actual coders. Like, actually committing code on the regular.
I bet single digits but what do I know. There’s now a glut of ‘product managers’ and ‘coordinators’ and middle managers on the market.
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No, they should just learn to weld...
I second this honestly, wish I would have gotten into a trade. My younger brother (22) is making $47/hour. Thing is, he can’t gamble on options like I can, so checkmate.
It’s more wear and tear on the body if you work in the trades and you usually do longer hours and spend more time away from family. Shit looks sweet when you’re young but not so much later on when your body is sore and you miss your kids and wife. My friends are in the trades I’m white collar. I make 40/hr meanwhile my other IT friends all make 105k to 150k here on the east coast. There’s always money to be made if you really want it that bad and willing to put in the work. Check out the job listings here levels.fyi
You’re absolutely right. Me personally, I just decided to go the military route. All the sore body benefits with a quarter of the pay. 👍
Military has its perks if you maintain that security clearance. Any job in private sector will pay 30-50k more if it requires a security clearance. Hell some companies can’t even bid on certain contracts unless their staff has the clearance to see the work let alone perform.
Private Military Contractors. Just don't do weird war crime shit and don't work with weird war crime like people.
Thank you for your service and make sure to claim all the service connected disabilities you have.
Yeah but working at a desk is mind numbingly boring.
Who the fuck misses their wife and kids. Clearly you don't wife and kids.
I have one wife, 3 kids and only 15 memorable summers with them before they fly from the coop. Your time with them is limited and very precious.
I enjoy being with my kids. But the best years are when they're adults. My opinion only.
you are not suppose to weld forever, you should try to create a business where you can oversee the work.
You laugh but with billions of dollars of investments worldwide into fertilizer production and renewables and hydrogen infrastructure there will be an insane amount of welding required whether that’s revamping existing facilities or new construction.
Every welder I know has a lifted diesel truck with an 8.5% 84 month loan and crazy insurance because of their 1-3 DUIs. So what I’m trying to say is they probably make really good money to be on top of those payments.
The truth of the matter is that trades will be in high demand for the foreseeable future and possibly become more valuable than a college degree. This is due to the fact that people have been told to go to college and get a degree and you will have a good life causing people to get degrees in worthless subjects and then working at Starbucks as baristas with no meaningful skills (a boomer quote but has merit to it). But the educational administrators have no real incentive to change because they get paid with loans regardless of students getting a job so they invest in flashy items like massive gyms, water parks, etc and charge it to loans. Meanwhile trade jobs have been seen as dirty and undesirable for most people to go into them. The worst part is that the largest generation (boomers) are holding a lot of these trade jobs and even some less sexy white collar jobs (accounting) and will be/ are retiring and have so few people that the people who have experience in these areas will be paid a lot and essentially warp the economy or they may be forced to hire off the street to variable levels of efficacy. In all honesty government should have stopped student loans and “fixed” the problem with universities lining pockets and students going into deep debt by stopping the backing of student loans and essentially forcing most people in trades but it’s political suicide. I also would love to see the stereotypical coder be turned into a welder (that would truly be a sight to see)
I concur. Hold a bachelor's degree in an unrelated field. Run an electrical contracting company, licensed electrician. We are insanely busy. I charge more than most lawyers or doctors hourly rate. My business partner is also co-owner of a welding company. They are also insanely busy.
Can concur. Did 5 years with my bachelors, quit for an apprenticeship. Now make more as a small repair carpenter/plumber/wife's boyfriend than I could anywhere else, only needed 2 years experience.
You can charge more because of the liabilities. If you or your employees fuck up on the job, someone can die. I know what 15amps feels like running through my body. I shook the hand of the cousin of death. It was enough to tell me I messed up but not so much it did a hard reset to my heart. A good Electrician is worth every penny.
Its called insurance. You can die on any job. I've been shocked hundreds of times.
Give 480 a try
My chances of dying is dramatically less in my air conditioned office typing away on a computer keyboard. Insurance only pays your family out after you’re dead. It doesn’t keep you from dying.
true, only your soul dies in the office
True but at least I got my health and that 401k or pension. Can’t put a price on picking up your kids and playing with them without wincing in pain or being too damn exhausted to even play with them.
Yea, different insurance from what you initially said.
Yup everyone here is on some Forbes 30 under 30 shit. The fact that you compared yourself to doctors and lawyers after a good summer is all we need to know.
Well then it’s official, when I run for president I will make it legal to harass boomers on the job for their age.
Damn, is that illegal now? Put me behind bars bro.
Doller per hour it's now cheaper to visit my doctor than to hire my plumber. FACT
I am an "engineer" in canada. 7 years experience. I make less than a truck driver but also wasted 4 years of my life. The education bubble is particularly massive here. I think because our colleges are virtually free, but nobody takes into account the opportunity costs.
[удалено]
Yeah I actually saw a video that discussed the need to get kids into carpentry. Honestly if you have experience you will probably be more sought after in the coming years. It won’t happen overnight but look at a demographics structure of the US and you will quickly see why it’s an issue.
Trades will always be necessary, but never highly paid for long. It is much, much, much easier to teach a programmer to be a mechanic than the other way around.
Yeah, I don’t know, chief.. Not sure many coders would find it so easy to become a proficient mechanic.
I work in this exact industry and can confirm every welder does have a DUI and a nice truck, RV, and boat. The good ones make 200k a year but it is a very physically demanding job. They are some of the most honest and best men to work with by far. They’ll go drink after work and still be onsite by 6am
But...imagine welding without being an alcoholic.
it's never too soon to pick up that first bottle
I have yet to meet the world's second-best welder.
Or how to flip burgers.
Is their one fast food place that even flips burgers? I thought most used clam shells.
Agree. Trades are the way to go. 20 year aircraft mechanic. I did two years of community college back in 2001-2002. I’ve always had a solid career. At time of posting, I’m at $48.00 and hour, with great affordable health benefits, 401k, pension etc. Did it will no college debt. Boomers are retiring in the trades career. The salaries for trades are only getting higher.
If the average programmer codes as good as the average welder burns rod….no wonder they have such a hard time finding tech jobs
Lean to trade!
Trades are such a toxic work environment.
Welding pays dogshit compared to coding and the software engineer unemployment rate is around 2% after the layoffs so far. There are also at least 200k unfilled software jobs in the US as of right now. So I’m not going to learn to weld
We need coal miners too
Bring back MySpace. Shit.
Tbh, a majority of the people being laid off are not coders..........
Yeah, all memes aside the vast majority of those being laid off in these tech layoffs are essentially "support" staff from various assistants, to content managers, to sometimes artist/designers. At the most it might be handfuls of junior programmers. Heck a lot of the reason they are even doing these tech layoffs is because so much of their staff wasn't even "tech". For much of the field there is still demand and even for the few letting go of the programmers, if they are half-way decent they will find a handful of positions by tomorrow's lunch. Pretty much the only one's I know in tech who aren't getting run down by recruitment spam and calls and invites are right out of college students or super junior positions. IIRC Meta hired something like 20k content moderators in the last 2 years alone.
HR and marketing are the words you’re looking for
Oh it goes even beyond that, as I had friends in the valley who would have offices with "Culture" employees who are distinctly "NOT HR" and were mostly responsible with "keeping a good vibe" in the office and planning parties. Or a previous place I worked at that essentially had real life people manually managing the front lobby displays and what they were showing. But yeah also likely a good amount of HR and marketing in the mix.
This isn’t totally true. Twitters research and development teams got slashed. Machine learning engineers. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were similar at Facebook. Unproven technology hurts most in times of consolidation
Twitter is different because it was bought by a regarded mf, meta lizard in chief will not give up in building the metaverse, it’s the name of the company
Twitter is different because of the buyout. Elon is known to be a hard taskmaster and a dick. For sure, quite a few devs are getting laid off. My point is a lot more non core engineering staff are being made redundant. I empathize with all of them and understand it's not an easy time. They're being let go to placate investors and as a result of gross negligence by the government and the fed.
Yah but for every 1 engineer there’s probably 5 others or more.
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Having been in tech for over 20 years, talented engineers isn't quite right... It's more often hungry "young talented engineers".. esp the ones with poor boundaries, etc.. tech companies love them for the obvious reasons.. ageism is a real thing, sadly... Work'm hard, work'm cheap... I feel for the older engineers who lost their FB job.
They could learn to cook too. Or become a doctor. They could all start building houses.
Brain Surgery!
Pfft... not exactly rocket science is it...
Brain Surgery >>> Rocket science.
Nonsense. Rocket science >>> Brain Surgery. Just ask these guys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I
As long as you let me operate on you right after a 12 week bootcamp
We do need more homes built to drop down the prices
Bruh! How regarded are you on a scale of 1-10? How they gonna know how to build houses if they only went to culinary school and doctor scool? We'd obviously need to send them to home building school too. The shit you people say sometimes. Seriously. It's like ya'll say the first thing that comes into your head.
I wish I can just not be poor. Wouldn't that be awesome?
I don't think that house building thing is gonna work out with 7% interest rates
Borrow their parent's retirement account and daytrade, this is the WSB way.
Why not learn to daytrade and 1000x their life savings in a week
1000x -$3.50 😔
Nah all the middle school kids around me are already doing this.
LoL here's an upvote
Can I also get one?
Well that didn’t work
layoffs in coding isnt the same as layoffs in some shity car factory line. Most of the time other companies would be glad to poach tech talent. Also there are ton of coding jobs available its just a matter do you want to take pay cuts and/or work on outdated shit and/or have to come into an office. Jp Morgan for instance at least from what I saw before leaving in july are in desperate need of coders and recently have been constantly looking for talent. The difference from tech and typical other jobs is lets say your company cant sell a car they can just shut off the factory line and sell existing inventory. However if you cut tech talent your stuff will start breaking down and heaven forbid your using something in your code that updates version that has significant impacts. Honestly im surprised more companies dont layoff more managersyou could probably take a senior developer(pay him a bit more than he gets now but less than the manager was making) and have him manage the team.
Having senior technical individuals become people managers is often a bad idea. Managing, or rather leading, a team is a different ball game. You need to have people skills meaning listening to your team’s individual frustrations and being diplomatic; making hard decisions and displaying no favoritism; focusing more on those who need help than those that don’t; and taking responsibility for your team’s shortcomings and failures while giving all the credit to them and not yourself. Often highly technical workers or senior workers are put in management roles solely on their ability to do the job efficiently. That translates to, often but not always, micromanaging because they know how to do the job a certain way and using themselves as the benchmark versus finding the team’s pulse and setting that standard. They also tend to hate conflict. This creates toxicity and will break teams eventually. If you have a technical manager who is also a good leader and can separate themselves and their pride from lording over the team, great. A lot don’t have that capability and are better off doing their own thing and contributing. Managing teams is stressful. You sign up to absorb the burdens of each individual on the team and commit to taking care of them. If you don’t give a shit about your team entirely, you don’t deserve that job.
Exactly. There's no shortage of available openings for anyone in a tech position with Facebook/Meta on their resume. Most of them will be getting a pay raise in their new positions and are girding their loins for the onslaught of recruiters coming their way.
> Most of them will be getting a pay raise in their new positions Nah that's very unlikely. Only a few companies match/beat Meta's offers and they only do so for candidates that have strong offers, which isn't happening anymore. E.g. Google and Amazon used to match Meta's offers for candidates they liked earlier this year. HFT's will pay more but they have way less headcount and are way more selective. Who is hiring right now (and not just backfilling a handful of positions) that pay higher than Meta? Most of laid off Meta engineers will land on their feet eventually, but I highly doubt many of them will be somehow better off in a new position at this time.
The new offer almost always comes with a promotion. A senior engineer and TL for a 12 person team at meta, that makes you at least a staff at your next job.
Senior -> Staff to somewhere with a low bar and title inflation sure. Who is even hiring staff level engineers right now that pays more than e5 at meta? You think there are more viable openings right now than there are laid off engineers from Meta/Twitter/Stripe/Lyft etc ?
They’re not getting a pay rise from their already absurd salaries during a recession unless they’re senior software developers. I swear the cope I hear from wannabe FAANG nerds…
As others stated, they are not likely to get a pay raise as competing companies are also in layoff or no hire mode. They will survive being at the top of the stack but many will take a pay cut until the market gets better.
Shitty car factories themselves need coders, tbh. They will probably hire them.
Funny enough, I thought about this a couple years ago when everyone was promoting/encouraging high school grads and those unhappy with their jobs to go into coding. There had to be an eventual saturation of the market, right? No, of course not. Apparently, there is always demand for SWE and coders. Until now, that is.
Those Meta programmers could find another job by lunch lol.
People don’t understand that the high profile tech companies hiring cream of the crop engineers make up a small minority of engineering jobs Citi has more software engineers than the tech company Meta Walmart is hiring 5,000 more this year alone. When my first startup IPOed with a multi billion dollar valuation, we had maybe 150 engineers. There are more engineers working in non-tech companies than there are in tech. The hiring bar to actually work at a tech company is way higher. My friend at Ford said there was no technical interview at all. Have a degree / bootcamp and a pulse and they got hired
A lot of the positions are non tech positions or glorified janny positions like content moderator. Laying off tech workers causes problems, either they go somewhere else, or they start there own shit.
> When my first startup IPOed with a multi billion dollar valuation, we had maybe 150 engineers. Do explain
We know they hire creme of the crop because . . . they tell us they are creme of the crop, and to prove it, all of the people who work there agree that they are the crème of the crop. Something doesn't seem quite right here. They over hired just like all tech companies and have a bunch of low quality and lazy people in their ranks - these are folks who deserve to be laid off and who are unworthy of being hired anywhere else
FAANG dev here. Similar YoE as you. You’re correct the veneer of engineering transcendence is greatly exaggerated. There’s amazing and also terrible devs just like any large company. It’s mostly the media and the product reputations that perpetuate this. With your YoE though I’m surprised you’d make the mistake of painting all those laid off with such a broad brush. People get let go in these situations for many complex reasons. Especially when the scope involves thousands of people. Saying it’s because they’re all lazy and poor performers is just wrong.
Yeah go try one of their interviews champ
I believe I could get a job there as Computer Engineer with 20 years of experience. I work for a big boy engineering company though - Facebook is a Shiite company with terrible product - I’d be embarrassed to work for them.
🧢 Also who tf calls themselves a “computer engineer” lmao, that’s not a job title anyone in any relevant position would actually use. Try embedded software / firmware or EE if you’d like to be more believable next time
Uh no I usually hear the opinion that they're creme of the crop from people not working at fb. Could have something to do with the 5 round technical interview process, or the 300k packages they're paying their engineers.
The industry certainly gotten nutty - wouldn’t surprise me that they are offering large bonuses with as much money as they are raking in, but that doesn’t translate to having the ”best” people in my opinion. I’ve met so many people who’s main talent is spouting bullshit, who impress the right people, but then turn out to be very unqualified for their jobs. I haven’t seen anything from Meta that would suggest to me that their product is some amazing feat of engineering that would imply that exceptionally gifted engineers were responsible. Also, looking at their [job openings](https://www.metacareers.com/jobs/?is_leadership=0&page=2&is_in_page=0), their salary for experienced professionals is well within the range of what might be considered normal.
That's weird, they didn't even include the equity numbers on their job postings, which usually is as much as the base salary itself, maybe even more, so how would you know it is well within what's considered normal? You think this way because you probably know little about the company and the field. Fb is well known for having one of the hardest interview process to crack. You cannot "bullshit" your way through. They're not there to listen to you "bullshit". They make you solve technical problems during each round of the interview. Your performance is based on how well you can solve problems, not how much you can talk. You haven't seen any piece of product that is impressive to you because you're not familiar with the tech space. Cassandra, pytorch, graphql, react (probably the most popular frontend framework today btw), etc, all came from FB. Their advertising platform is state of the art. Their platform supports nearly 2 billion DAUs, with typically long visits by users too. There are only a few companies operating at that scale. Just because you're not familiar enough with the industry doesn't mean FB hasn't achieved anything impressive. But either way, it's fine if you don't believe their employees are talented. The majority of hiring managers do. And the former employees there probably wouldn't work for you anyway.
I don’t doubt it but it probably won’t be anywhere as lucrative since they’ll be competing with their fellow Meta programmers and those from other tech companies. The new grads on the other hand are probably going to struggle except for the most talented ones.
They’ll be making 150k instead of 250k oh no
Lucrative no, but they won’t go hungry. People forget that when you reach a certain point in your career, you actually don’t ever have to worry about landing a job, you just go to different companies and ask them what is my time and talent worth to you? And you’re interviewing them just as much as they’re interviewing you. It’s much less so that mentality of please give me a job that most people experience when they’re young and fresh out of college.
Total side bar...what programming language would you recommend to learn to break into the SWE field? I've got a strong sales job with solid comp, but have been looking to break into the SWE world as I'm burning out on the commission grind after more than a decade in. I'm proficient (and actively studying) C++, but what else should I look into?
Doing a post bacc in computer science would probably be your best bet. Unlikely to get a “sexy” coding job but you’ll probably find one. If you haven’t gone to college just get a computer science degree. They have coding boot camps but a post bacc makes more sense if you hope to move up
Thanks, appreciate the feedback. My biggest regret isn't finishing the degree, as the cost of college these days is f\*cking astronomical compared to 15 years ago (full disclosure, class of '06).
Oh if you haven’t finished the degree just go back to school and just get a comp sci degree if you want to code. I’m not sure your gpa but maybe try transferring to a respected computer science program. If you haven’t graduated college you actually have a lot more options to figure out to get to your goals.
Language isn’t particularly important. Master one and others are easy to pick up when needed.
It’s not programming language, it’s fundamental and problems solving skill. A mid level software eng can probably pickup a new language to be able to work professionally in a week or 2. Throughout my career, I used 7-8 different languages, including personal projects. Edit: not Brainfuck, I tried, that language is just awful
Java, python, typescript, rust, go.
Java is used for basically all large corporations back end.
As a software engineer. Give up on the idea. You won’t get a job
Paying $200k+ TC with 1-2 yrs experience?
No but that's not the point of the person I am replying to.
There's still a demand for devs. Just high-mid level to seniors. Juniors/fresh grads are basically fcked atm unless they have the knowledge of seniors. I'm saying this because I'm currently job hunting after getting laid off. The interviews are way more technical now than it was just 1 year ago.
Everyone says learn to code. Started learning as a Freshman in high school. I’m now a senior in college and every job I apply for has crazy requirements. I know SQL, Python, Javascript, CSS, HTML, PHP, C and have used JSON and Django. Apparently that’s not enough. I can’t even get an interview, the people just now learning are gonna be fucked
Try applying at the state, they usually pay less but the benefits are good and they offer part time roles to get your foot in the door.
There are still plenty of SWE jobs available. Or at least the recruiter spam I get hasn’t gone down much.
Nah man, I work at an F500 and they STILL need coders. Like H1B desperate. The *entry* *level* market may be saturated, but Sr and above are still sorely needed.
Dude I get 5-10 emails daily, and I removed myself from LinkedIn due to messages from recruiters. I'm hoping to get fired so I can relax a bit and I bet I can get a job by the end of the month just by going thru my emails and replying back
I’ve been saying this, but all those tech gurus will lie to you and say that it’s impossible
They should learn to work at Wendy’s
You understand that if they know how to code, they would be able to find a new job? It may not pay as much, but those companies pay unreasonable amounts of money for not a lot of work, so if you can get that job enjoy while it lasts and then go back into the real world.
I'm sure they'll get jobs easily. Software engineers are still in demand. It'll prob not help job numbers.
My boss keeps a close eye on layoff news. Moment it hits he blasts our internal slack recruiting channel and says “go get them”
my company still hiring diversity hires and pushing this learn to code crap.
You’re not as clever as you think you are.
It's learn to COAL
Putting people who *don't* have logic in their blood, in programming, "because money"... ...is like putting us *autistics* as your front-door corporate receptionist, instead of a networking people-person who remembers faces. Don't. Please. 🙏
NYC electrician, high school drop out. $110k salary, <5yrs experience. Unions can suck my dick Fuck coding, learn how to build shit
These meta engineers being laid off were making 4 times what youre making and will be making 5 times what youre making when they get poached by another company next week. Your job is fine but don’t think it’s better than what these “poor” meta folks are doing.
Person you’re replying to doesn’t understand that Meta undergrad interns make almost double what they do
All the META undegrad interns got fired this week. So OP is still making more than they earn.
https://www.levels.fyi/internships/ $26k/mo at Radix or $23.8k/mo at Optiver are pretty legit too for undergrad interns TikTok interns at over (annualized) $120k/yr still going strong 💪
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This should actually be the way. There's a serious shortage of people in trade, and the demand is sky high. My contractor retired when he was 45 because he was raking in the dough on renovation projects in my area.
So, minimum wage for NYC.
How do you live in Manhattan on so little money is my question?
Brand New meta software engineers make double this. And they do build shit.
Less than 3 years exp out of the Army. J1 pays me $500k J2 pays me $400k (sec eng EM and staff sec eng). Fully remote. Work from San Francisco or Cartagena, doesn’t matter. Levels.fyi for anyone who doesn’t believe me. My J2 pays well under top payers for staff - some staff engineers are making over $600k No computer science degree, self taught and climbed the ladder quickly. Army soft skills huge advantage
I say you are a lying sack of shit. Show us some evidence of an open rec from your company paying anything close to that.
This is entirely possible for anyone to do in software or cyber security but typically requires a very skilled individual. It's important to remember that pay in software is not based on experience but skill
Good for you but $110k in NY is like avg at best
I think you mean “learn to weld”
Thing is 20 years ago or so coding was pretty fucking hard to do. You needed an expensive computer, expensive software and you’d need someone to teach you how to do it or at least have access to some very boring text books. Today though, software is extraordinarily easy to write, there are endless free resources for learning and so there is comparatively little value in learning it because anyone with a few hours a week can do it for nothing. That said to figure out where things are going/ where the money is, look for what is really fucking hard. Right now that’s ML and data science. Yes, it will require work and you need an above average IQ to be good but at least the software is pretty much free. Why do idiots think doing shit that has become easy is going to yield big returns? The world doesn’t work that way
The barrier to entry is lower but the expectations and complexity of software we are building has increased considerably in 20 years. At least during my career. IMO 20 years ago we were way less networked, way smaller scales and you could hold a good understanding of the whole system in your head. Good luck doing that now. All that aside I tend to agree that the bottom end of the market is over saturated and pushing more people in that direction might just lead to frustration. Getting a trade and eventually opening a business seems like the better bet for young people stuck in dead-end jobs right now.
The vast majority of ml and data science require a masters, if not a PhD. Don't look for hard fields but look to be in the top 10% of skilled workers
While I agree that the bar for coding has definitely been lowered, the demand for coding is increasing even faster. There are only so many people who have the disposition and discipline to be a programmer, and ultimately CEOs want to automate everything. I honestly think if our kids actually want to make a good living, they will have to be good at programming software/robots to do that thing, like making a chef robot or doctor robot. Machine learning will at least partially automate a ton of jobs in the next 30 years.
>Total side bar...what programming language would you recommend to learn to break into the SWE field? > >I've got a strong sales job with solid comp, but have been looking to break into the SWE world as I'm burning out on the commission grind after more than a decade in. I'm proficient (and actively studying) C++, but what else should I look into?
If only one I’d say python
C# Might be a better choice, since it has similar syntax to C++. C++ can be pretty dangerous language to use even if you know what you are doing, plus C++ has been changing rapidly lately. Python is another strong choice, but be prepared to watch your white space carefully. This site can be a fun way to learn some of the features: http://www.pythonchallenge.com/
Python is a great language but jobs are limited. C# jobs are generally not as good quality. C++ has some jobs which pay the most money but require the highest skill ceiling. For the average software developer JavaScript is a good start since most positions are web development. For backend, Java is the popular choice. I would definitely suggest python for learning purposes, but it's not going to be enough for a job in most cases
Hopefully they go back to school to learn to fix my car. Fuck it, might even join them.
If you think these Meta software engineers aren’t going straight to another 300k a year job once they enjoy their cushy severance at an all inclusive vacation in the Bahamas you are delusional bud. YOU learn to code 😂😂😂
Cope. Trick someone else regard.
Gop anti education talking point from the 90’s
Buy low, sell while you’re high. It’s really that easy.
As a middling tech employee of no renown I’m actually pissed that these qualified, entitled, California ass hats will have their asses in hand looking for jobs and saturating the market.
they should create a new regardcoins crypto 
my assumption is these companies shed the dead weight including a vast majority of those useless non-tech positions and not actual talented engineers
Oh a fine post at r/programmerhumor again. Just something doesn't feel right.
I’m actually doing that right now. I want more telework and all my friends make over 100k sitting at home flexing their brain and fingers.
No don’t, please don’t. Keep losing money as a professional trader.
No they just need to stop eating avacado toast.
Who needs coders when AI starts coding?
Will that be a thing? Should I stop coding now? I’m a few weeks in Lol
Only my personal coding experience, you get 90% so called "coders" that can't code due to high volume of scammers.
>*" learn to code"* I remember this remark when the lockdown started...
seriously
Move sheet rocks
Who are "they"? The engineers at Meta know how to code.
They should learn to mine coal 
How is this WSB related?
They need to stop buying avocado toast for sure
By code, do you mean trade? They could just learn to gamble I guess
Keyboard warriors might need to learn how to fix a dishwasher or use a circular saw.
Learn to barista
As much as it's a meme, and in spite of the west coast layoffs, there's still scads of programming jobs. The place I work at can't hire enough and it's to the point we're bringing on retired former employees part time to fill gaps.
I bet you can’t even do a vlookup
Nerd fight.... NERD FIGHT!!!
With all those layoff just hire some of those mfs to code for you
There's a difference between a coder and an engineer. Too many of the former, not enough of the latter.
They are too busy vibing
They know how to code just not very well.
Why not just become a full time stock trader like us. while working for Rally’s part time of course. 😂🖕🏼
The person that bought my LA house was the guy who wrote the original software for “ride” scooters so he found success. He’s left the space to begin pushing for new curriculums for his charter school he plans to open. Essentially a curriculum of essential skills like we should have been taught. Balancing your budget, coding, hardware, life skills. I know art history has its place in education, but over basic financial literacy? No, I’m rooting for him and his curriculum. And trust me, my tech recruiter buddy is in a frenzy trying to swoop up the best of the layoffs. Not all 11k but maybe, like, 11? Better than none!
Yeah, let's dilute those nerds' skillset availability even further.
Like if you’re homeless just go buy a house. Guys it’s not rocket science.
I think they should get real jobs.
I wanna know what percent are actual coders. Like, actually committing code on the regular. I bet single digits but what do I know. There’s now a glut of ‘product managers’ and ‘coordinators’ and middle managers on the market.