I have an Ivy league degree, worked in deep learning since alexnet at a leading startup in the space, was a CTO of a startup that got acquired and have referrals from very senior people at the top FANG companies and still struggled to get interviews.

I also have research scientist friends with Neurips papers, ones that solved long standing open math problems and even they are struggling to get hired.

What me and my friends heard from a lot of people at the large companies was that many of them are no longer hiring in the US, but in India, Poland and Brazil instead, and that the roles they have listed in the US are for internal transfers. I've had a referral for Google for months and did not get an interview for NYC based roles, but when I went to an ML conference in Warsaw a few months ago I learned that Google is looking to hire 2000 people there, but with people in that office making ~1/4th of my friends in the US.

On top of that you have a huge pool of bootcamp grads and foreign applicants so any role posted gets 1000s of applications in the first few hours, making it impossible for recruiters to look over all of them.

And if that wasn't enough we're going through a huge hiring downturn post the COVID bump, see: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE

Most of my brazilian friends living abroad also cleared said onsites, absolute majority rejected their offers(because they live elsewhere with a currency that has any sort of value).

As a matter of fact, Uber is struggling to fill their vacancies around Brazil. Everyone that can clear said interview are already in Europe/US. So you're only left off with the people that actually want to be closer to their families.

It sucks for you guys, but its just the new reality. Engineering is dead end career unless you are top 10%, move on to management, or money doesnt play a role, but at that point you might as well go duck farming or become a carpenter.

So those lobbying for work-from-home, well, this is the natural endpoint of that.

This is not without peril due to structural demographics. You can only outsource so much.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/hard-to-find-a-job-... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42361817

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-18/us-faces-... | https://archive.today/Lyr5t

Absolutely

> It’s all about cost.

Yes and No...

What is happening now in "tech" has happened before in other industries. Since the internet various service industries have outsourced, outshored, nearshored over and over all together and in different order. I would put immigration or even move to the public cloud in that bag of schemes.

Unless those are very low level tasks the companies doing that don't really save money in the short and long term. This has been proven over and over in the last decades, but rarely admitted publicly.

What companies try to hide by doing that are dysfunctions in management and HR (usually the people who won't get offshored).

So yes it is about cost of mismanagement that need to be hidden with a very short term vision, usually to reassure shareholders.

There is another layer to this that is still very taboo. There is an inability for our societies today to make people work together in a reasonably healthy and stable manner. This is why you will often hear about "toxic workplaces" or "great resignation".

And casting those problems in economic terms to avoid talking about it lead us to bad and costly solutions.

Of course your argument leads to two conclusions;

A) given how badly these companies are managed, and how it will be cheaper in the long run to make use of local talent, the market must be ready for a new wave of companies that rise up. Certainly (it would seem) the local workers are available, and ready to work. Certainly there are enough ex-workers who well understand what bad management looks like, and won't make the same mistake.

B) since this outsourcing is expensive, in the long run, I expect incumbents to start failing soon. There's no need to make thus behavior illegal, the market will simply correct naturally to the most efficient path.

The natural approach of the American Entrepreneur is to see where things are going wrong, and step into the gap - forging the next success.

Where you see companies failing, I see opportunity.

I have implemented those cost reduction programs over and over in many industries. I can assure you we always know it is gonna cost more than just doing things right. The problem is there is a lot of bad incentives, people saving their skins and and a whole industry making money out of those cost reduction programs. They are now permanent in many industries and became the standard way to manage those companies.

I would agree with your two conclusions, this is the logical way it "should" go.

Now reality is for most of the big players it probably won't go that way. For example I expect the hyperscalers to go the way telcos went. They have the power (financial, political & co) to freeze their position in the market and they are now a critical part of our infrastructure. But working for them or keeping their stock in the last 20 years was probably a very bad move.

My contact info is in my bio.

Same here. At my last company, each missed milestone meant "fire an American, hire a Pole."

Could it just be, the more senior/executive level you are - the harder it’ll always be to find another comparable job.

The funnel gets smaller the higher up you are.

I always wondered why American companies have offices in such unattractive locations. Last time I saw a company whose only European office was in Belgrade. Who are you going to convince to move to Belgrade to work for your company, lol? This is not like the US were all states speak English and have broadly shared cultures.

and of course everyone speaks english…

I was pleasantly surprised that that team spoke better English than most folks in the US. Every one of them.

If that's any indication of how most of the city speaks, I don't think any English speaker would have a bit of trouble communicating.

In particular, the Nikola Tesla Museum, free walking city tour, massages, and some cool bars.

Everything was really inexpensive compared to say Germany, and the women over there... they are stunning!

Of course it'd be different to live over there, but it really wouldn't be the worst place to end up if you were earning a decent salary.

Only obvious downside for me was smoking in restaurants (I can't remember but probably bars as well). Not sure if it's still the same now.

Obviously this is done to hire local workers. In general, and especially in Europe, most people are not interested in moving away from their home country if they can avoid it, even if it means a vastly reduced earning and career advancement potential. Serbia in particular has lots of engineers with a phenomenal quality to cost ratio.

so yeah ya'll folks are not hallucinating - jobs are gone.

e.g https://www.rippling.com/en-GB/careers/open-roles - engineering. majority of non-staff roles in india with staff roles in the US.

A ton of big tech companies opened large offices in Poland in the past few years. It’s starting to look like a pretty major tech hub. If you look at Google or Box job boards most of their open roles in Europe are in Warsaw.

I started by creating a resume and LinkedIn and aggressively optimized both as much as possible. Using a ATS checker I found online, I got a score of 96 for my resume after numerous changes (29 changes after a few weeks).

I started applying aggressively (and tracking) immediately after being let go. I’m pretty sure early rejections were because my resume was awful.

After nearly 2 months, 588 applications, with an average 10% response rate within an average of 10 days per response, I had 16 move to interview stages and 2 final offers. I accepted one of them (it checked all my boxes for what I wanted so didn’t have to compromise). I had 3 referrals but none of those materialized to interviews or offers. I did not work with any recruiters.

Market is bad, no doubt about that. I can’t speak to the experience of others but I’m convinced my response rate is good enough and it’s a numbers game.

This happened earlier this year.

Some stats for those who think it may influence my results:

40s Asian male. US Citizen. So no VISA needed and not white and don’t check any DEI boxes.

This is for Senior SWE IC role.

It's always been a numbers game. The people writing this posts you don't want to work with. Think about it, would you write this post (you the reader, not you throwaway guy I'm replying to)? Top commenter entitled guy with "Ivy League" degree who probably did everything right in school but cannot code.

Caveat lector: This is simply a retelling of my personal experience, YMMV. This is not advice.

What has consistently worked for me: I stopped applying for jobs, and redirected all that effort into creating and publishing open source projects that demonstrate competence in the areas of work I want. And, just as importantly, I contribute to big established open source projects in those areas too.

I did not apply for my current job (started 6 months ago): they solicited me, based on my open source work. All the best jobs I've had have been like that, this is the 3rd time it worked.

When I'm unemployed, I only apply for jobs I actually want, typically spending an hour each on 0-2 extremely targeted applications per week. But I treat churning out new open source stuff as my full time job until somebody notices. In addition to successfully landing me three great jobs over the past decade, this approach has made me a much much better programmer.

Also, I strongly believe spending hours a day writing new code will enhance your ability to pass technical interviews much more than gamified garbage like leetcode.

A huge part of making this work is not living a typical valley lifestyle: I plan my life around the median national salary for a software engineer, and when I'm making more than that it all goes straight into my savings. In the bay, that requires living frugally (by bay standards...), but I can't even begin to put into words how grateful I am to past-decade-me for living like that and giving today-me the freedom to turn down the bad jobs and wait for the good ones. Obviously, I don't have children.

I do a lot more open source than a typical programmer in the valley, but I don't think I'm "exceptional" in any sense: you just have to put in the work. I do feel like I was very lucky to start my career in an extremely open-source-centric role, and in fairness that gives me a leg up here which I am probably inclined to underestimate.

1. Contribute your time generously to a software community

2. Get to know the people and help them

3. Most people have a bias towards reciprocity, want to help you!

Bonus: do this before you need a job, but while you’re employed.

I used to think that way, but now I understand it differently. Networking is about building trust or business friendships. Within the network, everyone stakes their reputation, so there is less need for verification. You wouldn't risk your reputation recommending your plumber friend if he was a bad plumber. Everyone gets to let their guard down and trust their peers.

It's funny that something so radically collectivist ends up sounding skeevy. I think it's only the case if you try to network at the last minute, to get something out of it.

You can also get good hires and open positions thru community friends. Invest in community and community invests in you.

I keep applying for jobs, and recently accepted the possibility to relocate for an on site position (because staying where I am and hoping to get a remote position hasn't worked out). I just had a promising lead in Texas 'move forward with another candidate'... argh!

Companies aren't willing to train people, not even their current employees. They want their candidates to come prepackaged with at least X years experience in Y technologies for several technologies. Their unwillingness to budge created the H1B catastrophe we see now. I'm more than willing to replatform my skillset (B2C Commerce Cloud to Shopify, or Java to .NET, for example), but no one's offering.

Looking around at the big picture, it seems that most money is leaving tech to chase higher returns elsewhere. If you aren't doing AI or crypto, it feels that you're fighting over bones. The scraps were gone a long time ago.

Really companies should be banned from importing more people[1] if they laid off a certain number in the last year. That way the job market would be more likely to self correct.

[1] I think they should still be allowed to hire people who are already in the country on a visa, as it's unfair to make their risk of being kicked out of the country worse. And they should be allowed to renew existing visa workers

Reverse outsourcing. Don't send the job overseas, send the overseas person here!

They need to import labor because the domestic labor pool isn’t good enough. A quieter part is that people immigrating also expect less for their outputs.

Are you and Elon saying that India’s education system and universities are just plain better than MIT, Stanford, etc? If so - why are so many studying abroad in places like Canada and Australia?

If not, then are Indians just genetically smarter than Americans, so that their pool is better?

It just seems like immigrants are willing to work more for less, so that in the future when they’re citizens, they can work less for more.

I don’t personally subscribe to that belief.

My position is more so that wealthy, powerful people stand to gain a lot by disempowering their workforce, and they’re working hard to do just that. People like Elon would love to see cheap labour and AI beset the workforce such that it had no leverage and lower wages. He has said about as much in various ways already.

I’m a little disappointed that my comment wasn’t voted down more, because I really did phrase it as my own opinion.

[1] Well, except when the country fails to invest enough in education and training. It's wrong for the UK, for example, to consistently not fund enough medical students, and make up for it by importing staff educated by third world countries.

Getting jobs in AI has also been hard for a lot of people as well. Many of my former colleagues who worked for a very visible company in the ML/NLP space have had issues finding good positions.

Companies selling physical goods lead to a decent amount of jobs in every country they operate in by definition. Not so for software.

It is US big tech who has for a decade or 2 reaped enormous benefits from extracting large sums of money from non-US economies while contributing near-zero back to those economies (often not just near-zero but straight up deeply negative amounts due to externalities).

Enormous net negative, and I'm lucky enough to be part of the poster child society that shows just how much better the alternative is: South Korea. And even here people still use lots of US tech (Instagram is huge), just much less of it, in every case at massive net benefit to Korean society as a whole.

Instant messaging, online payments, online shopping, second hand market place, domestic hotel bookings, email are all local tech companies. Food delivery was local for very long, now technically acquired by foreign company but run independently as local tech. Taxi apps have been local for very long, though Uber's presence is growing - but even there they got into the market by acquiring a local player and running them relatively independently afaik (less sure about this one). Even then, majority of market share is still non-Uber locals. Anything finance-related is local. Maps are local. Gaming streams was Twitch+Local but is now local only.

Despite Android enjoying >90% market share for 10+ years (now rapidly losing to iOS, I'd say among age 20-30 iOS is >40%), the only Google products that have been popular were Youtube and Chrome. Gmail somewhat.

Even the dating app market here is dominated by local players. This is the only case I can think of where the result is actually worse than if it wasn't, which is quite a feat considering just how awful Tinder and friends are.

The only US apps that dominates its field here is Instagram. Chrome and Youtube do as well but gained that purely through default and PC usage. Netflix and Disney+ are popular by virtue of original content, but sports are local players. Spotify to an extent, but again, nowhere near 90% market share like US or Europe.

For obvious reasons, most tourists and short-term foreigners here hate all of this. But frankly their opinions should be ignored. Despite being a foreigner as well it's clear as day that it's much better for everyone else.

The local replacement of Google maps is the easiest example, I've written a little about it here [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42286046

China is another country that has developed its own local apps, mainly because many global ones are banned there. Even if Google, Uber, and others had free rein, I don’t think they could compete with the existing options. The local apps are so tuned to Chinese culture, an American app just wouldn't be intuitive to them.

Do you think the local apps, aside from dating, are better than their U.S. counterparts, or is it mainly due to their strong local momentum? Could the Western apps compete in that market? It sounds like Uber is making some inroads.

> Do you think the local apps, aside from dating, are better than their U.S. counterparts, or is it mainly due to their strong local momentum? Could the Western apps compete in that market? It sounds like Uber is making some inroads.

Yes, they're better.

The first reason being what you touched upon with China. To give an example; Meta will almost never consider developing some specific feature or local integration purely for Italy, despite almost everyone in Italy using it. This is an awful situation, really, but it's just because from Meta's perspective it doesn't push the needle [1]. What if instead of Whatsapp all of Italy used ItaliApp? They'd be busy fulltime doing local integrations, things that make sense for Italians. There's nothing else for them to do. They would probably have tried at some point to go abroad, utterly failed, and from then on just focused on the local market. How do you improve revenue from a market, offering a free app like instant messaging, when you already have 99% penetration? Make people use it more. How? Useful features.

Second reason is much less enshittification. Now I think this effect would be less severe for ItaliApp, as part of this is cultural in Korea, but it'd still be there. Given ItaliApp will not turn into a trillion dollar behemoth, if it enshittifies too much, there's more chance of competition popping up. Either local, or the neighboring EspañaApp sensing an opportunity. The Google maps comparison I linked to at the bottom is the best example. US apps can be great - many years ago, Google maps used to be. They just no longer are.

Uber is gaining ground mostly through tourists and short-term expats. The biggest local taxi app took far too long to add foreign credit card support. But like I said, Uber here is still a JV, did not start out as Uber, and I'm fairly sure they still run their ops here much more locally than they do in e.g. European countries. It remains to be seen whether they'll keep on growing, but for now among locals I still put their market share at <20%. I do actually use them for a different reason; unlike the main local app, Uber shows the drivers' rating after they take your call. I haven't met anyone else who cares about this though.

[1] I actually think they're leaving a lot on the table here, but I could be wrong.

Seen from the rest of the world, the has spent the last few decades killing the software and hardware industry of everybody else through practices that feel very much like a combination of a tax on tech and an abuse of monopoly.

If you wonder, the rest of the world doesn't quite see any difference between the "unfair" practices of which US Conservatives accuse China and the practices that the US has adopted for the last 40+ years in a number of domains when it comes to becoming/remaining the dominant player in a number of fields.

If the latter, yes, certainly. My last two employers had to hire US and Canadian developers anyway just to be able to sell to the US/Canada, so I guess it's already the case.

As for Americans, I think they have to question what their taxes are doing for them? They grow up receiving a sub-standard public education, they take on an enormous amount of debt to get higher education, and when they reach adulthood, the job market unceremoniously has nothing to offer them because its all being given away to non-americans.

What's the point of a nation anyway? What's a government's job? Maybe nationhood is an outdated idea and we should all bow to corporate overlords instead.

So, yeah, my non-US taxes being used to pay for US jobs? I can live with that. But I can also live with them being used to pay for jobs in my country.

More than likely an internal hire. This is often the case if you're an external candidate.

>> This is the toughest market I've ever seen. I easily made it to on-sites at FAANG a few years ago and now I'm getting resume rejected by no-name startups (and FAANG). The bar has also been raised significantly. I had an interview recently where I solved the algorithm question very quickly, but didn't refactor/clean up my code perfectly and was rejected.

I've since landed one decent offer, but mostly got lucky (the sys design interview was about an obscure optimization problem that I specialized in for years - though I didn't let on that fact)

Between that time, I failed multiple interviews (always solving the question, but never quickly or cleanly enough).

Companies are incredibly slow to respond back (up to 4 weeks from time of application to first interaction with a recruiter).

Some companies are incredibly demanding (recruiter screen -> tech screen -> tech screen -> take-home test -> group discussion about take-home test -> behavioral / culture interview).

Don't think it's about race. It's just an employers' market. And if you refuse to jump through the hoops, somebody else will.

For reference, the last company on my resume is a top tier company that every recruiter has heard of.

Honestly I feel this situation is an invitation/opportunity to show your depth. I had a similar experience where I was asked to implement a box filter, which I did naively, and then asked to do it the clever way.

I remembered about Haar classifiers https://docs.opencv.org/3.4/db/d28/tutorial_cascade_classifi... which solve the same problem, and I was familiar with the OpenCV implementation. I mentioned this and started to write code, but at that point the interviewer was much more interested about why I knew about some obscure old-school opencv method than finishing the coding exercise.

I’m interviewing with like 10 companies right now and it feels like a full time job, I have full days of interviews lined up for almost every day in the first 3 weeks on January.

Market is rough right now for sure but I also want to share some flags I’d personally note when looking at your website / LinkedIn.

1. You have experience in a lot of technologies, which sometimes is good, but can also be the case where you don’t have expertise in any of them. 2. According to LinkedIn since 2016 most of your gigs were about a year long. You also had a lead engineer gig that lasted eight months. I’m sure you put more info about it in your resume but it’s a pretty big flag considering that it spans not only the downturn but boom periods as well. 3. No well known companies in your list. I know it sucks that pedigree matters so much in our industry but it does. 4. Political posts / complaining on LinkedIn. Having dealt with political stuff at work (from both sides of the isle) it’s such a pain in the ass that my risk management alert kicks in. 5. I see you’re in Denver. Are you applying only for remote gigs? Sadly, a lot of companies are doing RTO and probably not in your area.

Hope this helps a bit. Hope things improve for you soon.

Linking to Jack Posobiec’s tweets and complaining about being called a racist on hacker news, on your linkedin account, just makes you look radioactive. And dumb: linkedin is for hustle porn; 4chan, twitter and their derivatives are for online political warfare. Your inability to distinguish between these shows that you will likely act inappropriately in a professional environment. It shows you don’t know your audience at all, which are the people whose money you want.

And then there’s the age-old question of whether you want to be right, or be liked. It’s not really your responsibility to educate your coworkers on socio-economic-political realities, and they likely don’t come to work to hear others’ opinions about it. But you are shaping an online persona that advertises such a service.

I’ve gone through long stretches of looking for work and fear another in this market environment, so I do sympathize. But you gotta button up. And don’t just shape a better image of a pleasant coworker–actually be one. I’ve worked with too many this-is-your-brain-on-social-media types, of all political persuasions, and it’s miserable.

It's really fun (no sarcasm) watching all of you people jump to the wrong conclusion as you judge my motivations and reasons for posting this though.

Aside from seeing a few posts and knowing he's right wing, I don't even know who Jack Posobiec is. Politics isn't my main thing. As I stated above, I am "socially apolitical". I have my opinions and my affiliations and I mostly keep it to myself unless it benefits me to do otherwise.

i've worked with many, many recruiters over the years, and only a handful who weren't actively interfering with finding a good dev / company fit.

between that, automated resume filtering and linkedin's requirements to serve linkedin before serving anyone else, we're all living in a situation that would be hilariously ridiculous if it wasn't so sad.

I completely agree that we need a disruption on the hiring front. The entire hiring process is broken.

1. > No expertise in technology:

Strongly disagree. I'm an expert in python, javascript, c#, application development, object oriented programming, agile, communication, and much more. I guess this isn't shining through on my profiles. Will have to find a way to fix it. There are many companies who value a generalist skill set.

2. > 2016 "gigs"

I had health issues starting in 2016 which derailed my career. I took what I was able to get and was still able to progress. I was promoted from eng I to eng II prior to the health issues. Later I was able to land a job as VP of engineering.

3. The lead engineer (VP of engineering) role that I had was a complicated situation - I performed my duties well and was rewarded handsomely. Working for startups doesn't always end well. From there I took time off to work for myself and you're correct, that's when the downturn started. Had I known AI would be released and jobs would dry up, i wouldn't have taken the risk of starting my own company at that point in time.

4. I havent worked for huge companies my entire career, much of it has been for start-ups but Enova, DoubleClick and Threadless are actually well known. Enova is a huge corporation and DoubleClick (one of my first jobs) was purchased by Google which is what lead to them becoming an ad company. Threadless has declined in popularity, but at the time it was extremely popular and well known. Other than that as I said, startups. Idiotic to judge a person based on whether or not the company is well known.

5. I haven't "complained" on LinkedIn. Regardless, i have deactivated my LinkedIn account, which I had planned on doing for the last month. Thanks for giving me the motivation to do so tonight. It is a silly echo chamber that has never lead to anything positive for me. I didn't even have an account until a few years ago so it will not be missed. It's clear that maintaining a LinkedIn social media account is a career hazard. That's the most useful thing your unsolicited feedback has turned up.

6. > political posts

Political posts online prevent me from working? That's absurd. My politics haven't even been stated aside from my position on H-1B and globalism. I should be allowed my political opinions without fear of reprocussion from a biased hiring manager such as yourself, but i really haven't even put any out there other than this post.

I have political opinions, and I am registered to vote, but I'm "socially apolitical" aside from a small amount of activist work I've done which hasn't been broadcast on the internet.

I don't bring politics or religion to the workplace.

It's like if a user does something wrong in your app, you don't blame or explain to the user what they did wrong. You figure out how to improve your UX.

I came to similar conclusions from your public profile. The defensiveness of your response would be a 7th red flag.

This website is part of my public profile. Allowing people to shape an incorrect narrative of myself on this website is not something I will be doing. Especially when it is coming from anonymous posters who haven't shared their professional credentials.

> you have to correct your online appearance

Obviously I am continuously looking to improve my "online appearance". I disagree with the feedback I've received here. People's emotions are running high on a hot-button topic (immigration and job market woes) so in other locations in this post I'm being called a racist and a conspiracy theorist - I am taking everything here with a grain of salt and doing damage control as anonymous accounts sift through my various online profiles and offer up unsolicited advice. Defending one's position is pretty standard in this situation.

Correcting disinformation ("complaining on linkedin", "no expertise in technology", "political posts", "you're a racist", "you're a conspiracy theorist") is part of maintaining a public profile on the internet.

Lastly, as I stated in my response to the alleged hiring manager with regard to my expertise in technology:

> I guess this isn't shining through on my profiles. Will have to find a way to fix it.

Given how competitive the job market is right now, you have a PR issue. It's important to take a deep breath and recognize that people are trying to offer you objective advice.

If you're not willing to improve your public profile, you can't expect to receive interest.

Have you ever had a friend in a terrible relationship, where everyone can see how bad it is except for them? You have a problem with your public image. If you don't think it accurately portrays you, then clean it up. From your post, it seems like you're involved in really interesting projects—why sabotage your good deeds?

Deleting your LinkedIn profile seems a bit extreme. You should be creating it in a very polished way. All you need is one job to come from it or to catch the eye of one recruiter.

You have to play the game. That sucks, but the freewheeling days seem to be over. Play the game or accept you are making the rock you're pushing uphill heavier.

Deleting LinkedIn isn't extreme in the least. I hate the website and I'm better off without it - its a dying social media platform and i only had the account because a former employer forced me to create it. I am sure wpyou wisuph you could scour it for intel, but I had intended to delete it for months and was only using it to promote my personal projects and my other accounts, and apply to jobs. I monitor all of my sites with Google analytics and was getting very little traffic from LinkedIn, and none of the job applications I put out with LinkedIn panned out due to it being over saturated with applicants - as I said, worthless.

Furthermore, I am correct about H-1B. It is a broken system. This has been acknowledged by businessmen and lawmakers alike on both sides of the aisle. Posting about it on LinkedIn isn't political or complaining. I happen to be connected to extremely influential people. If my posts reached them and swayed their opinion to my side or even got them thinking about it: mission accomplished.

To reiterate, I didn't ask for advice, I asked about OTHER people's experiences as they pertain to racism, ageism and sexism - the fact that people jumped into my personal profiles and started offering up unsolicited commentary reveals their true motivations: trolling. Very unprofessional. Ill-informed "advice" rejected.

I don't need the internet to think for me, it's why I didn't ask, but thanks for contributing to the entertaining echo chamber.

I work in immigration and my colleagues in the industry noticed the difference in skilled immigration. It even affected the overpriced temporary housing market that mostly targeted skilled immigrant workers. Freelance relocation consultants report having their worst year on record.

I also noticed a dip in traffic but it might be caused by Google’s plundering of the web with its AI summaries. I can’t tell if the actual demand changed. I run a website that helps immigrants settle.

It’s generally accepted in Germany that things are not great right now. I could likely find matching evidence in yearly reports, but the vibe alone is telling.

Two people I know have been let go (pumps and wood sectors resp.). Another (metal construction) is getting barely more than minimum wage. There's only one dude (chemical engineer) who is doing well (nearing 100k at 5 years work experience). The others are getting by.

Politicians are still complaining about Fachkräftemangel, skilled labor shortage, but it's really a wage slave shortage.

> Politicians are still complaining about Fachkräftemangel,

These two things can be, and in fact are right now true at the same time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_unemployment

Everyone coming from an ex-Warsaw-Pact country most probably already lived through that before. We've entered the market economy (and stopped the play-pretend) with huge unemployment and lack of skilled workers at the same time.

Related or not (Covid was a big shock after all), "rich" countries have been living way over their means for many decades now (in terms of natural resources). It's particularly wild to see people calling for a return to the "norm" that were the post-WW2 decades : that wasn't a "norm", that was the fastest growth period that mankind had ever seen (and probably will ever see) !

So now (since the 1970s) we are way over due for a correction... which is probably going to look like a few centuries of recession with a few good years (for some maybe even good decades) thrown in here and there.

Why is this German word thrown in without any explanation? I’ve noticed this is a common trend whenever a Germany-adjacent topic is discussed.

The short version is that there is a shortage of skilled workers that absolutely requires immigrants to fill the gaps. However when you look around there isn’t really a shortage; people just aren’t willing to work for little pay. The English term implies that there is an actual shortage.

It might please you to know just how much English other languages are peppered with.

It's probably true if you own the company, but there's also disgruntled folks who apparently got treated like shit during their apprenticeship and who snicker at their former employers or dissuade would-be prospects when their field isn't doing well (boohoo poor Porsche drivers) or when they try to advertise a craft. At least the YT comments under several blue collar documentaries/adverts say so, but I know none personally.

Then there's an ongoing crisis in construction due to widespread financing problems (need two decently paid full time earners, no kids, to afford it with some certainty and no 30+ year debt slavery at least around where I live) and assorted crafts.

An electrician friend is doing okay, but not exactly great, at barely more than 40k pre-tax per year. Another one who is farmer on the side (can't afford to live from it) makes about as much in his profession (mechanic). I.e. forget single earner family and/or mortgage.

It's difficult to gauge accurately, because statistics are complicated and/or shit and/or biased, the employment situation highly depends on region and field and things seem to be changing at a crazy pace, not least caused by the recent economic shocks (war, COVID, a decade+ of QE), problems with funding pensions/bad demography, increasing competition in core industries, high energy prices and political indecisiveness. How much each factor contributes remains a mystery to me. Wealth m/billionaires seem to be growing fine.

Personally I'm more and more convinced there's no conspiracy and things really are as bad... The Japanification of Germany. At least our debt isn't as high yet.

I see a lot of amazing people struggling in the market right now. This is mirrored by a general slowdown in actual project spend by businesses.

Locally, there has been a very very minor uptick in activity prior to Christmas which is a historically weird time for that to happen, so I’m slightly optimistic for the new year.

But the last 12 months have been very tough.

I am currently applying to ~15 jobs a day starting late Sep till now mostly on Linkedin. I know it might not be the best time to look due to holidays. When wake up the next day finding 3-5 "decided not to move forward" So then I think theres something wrong with my resume? So I update it a little each day, its an unless cycle I have probability done this 50+ times now? Also seeing 100+ job applicants even after the job posting has been up for only a few hours.

Also approaching 2 decades of experience, also white American (they always ask on applying). I have a bachelors degree but its in Interactive Media taught myself everything else.

I am one month away to moving back home with my brother because I can only afford another one month rent on Credit Card until its maxed out.

Free time I just spend it learning learning learning, and an hour gym routine helps with stress. I try not to think about the situation that I am in or the job market.

All we can do is try our best everyday, theres only so much we can do and stressing out is the worst thing for the mind/body.

- the end of zero interest rate policies mean that investments in projects can’t show a return “someday” but actually have to show some benefit on a reasonable timeline, say 2-3 years. Gone are the days when hiring armies of warm bloodies and having them work on “moon shots”.

- the expiration of the tax write off for programmer salaries when developing a new product.

The bottom line is that most of the market is now very price sensitive (hence trying to find the cheapest labor i.e. less experienced or overseas devs) and that devs in high-cost geographic areas now need to be extra productive to complete.

Personally, even for the not-so-highly paid tech workers, if you're complaining about "some foreigner willing to do it for less", you don't get a lot of sympathy from me. If they can do it, and are willing to do it for less, good on them!

Complaining about less well off folks coming and taking our jobs seems so Un-American. I'd be upset to lose my job, no doubt. But I'd be in good company.

I know there are a lot of folks eager to tell me how naive/ignorant I am, but the bottom line is that I'm allergic to entitlement.

If we look back tech jobs have been growing fast since at least the 90s.

We have basically put everything on computer and the internet in the last decades with some obvious efficiency gains. But how far should we continue to invest in this and expecting a return on investment?

At the same time, in the west, agriculture or manufacturing jobs have been annihilated. Could they see that coming?

Probably no as it was not that obvious from their point of view.

At least in the west, first world or whatever you want to call it, most people need cheaper housing, cheaper energy, less taxes and bureaucracy. This is just what most young people complain about.

People do not complain they need more computers, smart thing or self driving cars. They might actually need less of this but still consume it because it is in fact the things they can afford.

Also in the EU there is a growing and undeniable regulatory framework which is destroying the local tech industry.

What I mean is we could see the type of shift that you only see once in a lifetime. Where computer tech see the same fate as agriculture and manufacturing had.

Hard to tell if this is just a hiccup or the start of the destruction of the tech jobs market.

1) I work at a large company everyone in the US has heard of. When I walk in the public areas of the company or at lunch, it looks like we are based in Mumbai. There is no "diversity", it's one country in particular, which is India. (Funnily enough, this demographic isn't reflected in management)

2) I overheard the 4th level (above me) manager complaining to another manager that his department (he oversees the whole floor, let's say a bit under 100 employees) has 30+ open reqs, and HR has only given him a few resumes (unknown what time period this refers to). The last interview I gave was to an H1B who had an audio link in his earbuds to someone who feed him answers to my technical questions.

3) I have 20 years experience, yet this job pays the same amount I was making 10 years ago. There is effectively zero negotiation for salaries. They will happily let you go vs bargain.

4) A previous mega-corp I worked for, GE Healthcare in Wisconsin, looked like India on campus. Utter lack of diversity. I recently got a job solicitation from an Indian recruiter for $40/hr for C++ development at this ___location.

I think it's very clear that the cat's out of the bag about how to evade high-paying tech salaries. Set the parameters to discourage Americans from hiring, create a bottleneck so that your open reqs last longer, then use their extra-legal powers (unfettered access to congresspeople) to claim they are falling behind profitability, but if they just had those wonderful H1Bs everything will be ok.

Do you find that Indian managers hire their own?

I'm assuming you're not Indian.

I applied to FedEx affiliated company for SWE, and everyone except upper management was Indian. I was shocked.

Incidentally, there is a completely orthogonal concern that almost nobody is aware of: that Indian children are essentially being forced to study tech or medicine in order to get high-paying jobs in the west. This essentially erases their culture and robs the children of any freedom of identity. From single-digit ages they are being forced (under threat of discipline) to provide economic security for their parents. That is sickening.

What are you referring to here? Care to share some sources?

Yes that's what it seems to me based on many of the things I've read (not in this thread)

How did you detect that?

Previous to that period of unemployment, my resume tended to get noticed. I got interviews from 3 applications out of 5. But this time, it was 3 out of 150.

Read that last paragraph again. My resume has not gotten worse. I still have decades of experience, a master's degree and a bunch of patents. That used to count for something.

My conclusion is that the market has gotten much worse for people with experience who don't hide being white and male.

Idk, for me occams razor tells me that the labour market is just a bit shit for all genders and races at the moment..

If you're female, you earn a point. If you're a minority, you get another point. So, before considering all the other skills and qualifications, you already have a few points ahead of the typical white male applicant.

hence now being white male is what must be a problem (though you offer them $10 million to change color of the skin and gender and there will not be a single taker … too funny …)

35, West African Immigrant (US Citizen), 12 Years of experience. Currently at Yr 4 at Fortune 500 Tech Company (Prior at Consulting). Bachelor Non-Stem. Customer Success/Implementations, Technical.

I've been applying since Feb 2024. 47 External, 5 Internal, 6 HR Screens, 6 Phone Interviews, 6 (3+ Rounds) and 6 Rejections.

No AI just careful tweaks for each submission so its time intensive but I feel like its tough for everyone.

It’s quite bizarre at all levels — I often receive invitations from recruiters to apply to “women led startups”, but when I ask why I’m qualified there’s no real explanation other than I’m a woman who owns a computer. The same seems to be true of female founded startups. Doesn’t matter what the role is or what’s being built — Does she use a computer while in an office building? That’s women in tech! The purpose of most of these interviews is really about manufacturing consent: “It’s just too hard to hire women! Just look how hard we’ve tried!” I’m all for incentivizing under represented groups, but it wouldn’t be so bad if the phrase “women in tech” was short hand for “women who have written a lot code” and less about “brave women who uses their yonic powers to guide the brutish male code monkeys.” Attend a FAANG sponsored women centric event and you’ll see that I’m only exaggerating a little bit.

Ironically, my transition has been something like a rendition of Gift of the Magi: The more passable I became, the less experienced I was perceived by my peers. And worse, what was once thought of as confident display of technical ability is now seen as a lack of demure. Insecurity runs deep in this industry.

IMO the hiring problem isn’t about gender or race. It’s the fact that tech doesn’t have the luxury of an economic environment where all the money is imaginary. There’s really no era quite like the last two decades. Tech companies could burn through billions of dollars on intangible assets with no immediate need for deliverables. As the perception of innovation diminishes, companies feigned cutting edge leadership by leaning into the virtues, and as a byproduct, having the employees fight over who’s more oppressed.

I think everyone here has questioned if their skill set is actually worth their salary. “Sure, sometimes it’s a free ride, but those hard sprints are really why I’m paid six figures!” — It’s explanations like that which let software engineers hit the snooze bar on whether their employer’s solvency is transitive of their technical expertise, or rather just two decades of zero interest rate policies. It’s likely a little bit of the former and a lot more of the latter.

IMO most engineers are looking through the wrong end of the telescope, trying to find a job like the dating you do when you’re looking for a comfortable but uncommitted relationship. That time is over and our jobs are now akin to the blue collar trades who’s customers have a clear idea of what they’re paying you for, rather than a vague set of technical skills that might be worth exploring on their dime.

To add to your ZIRP point: I find it bizarre that tech companies are still valued at 10x their revenue in the stockmarket. The multiple is a high-tech premium... because computer technology is new and therefore every business that involves computers is high-growth?

We don't pay crazy multiples for businesses that use electricity or telephones. Why should we pay them for tech? Soon all these high-tech companies are going to have valuation multiples like manufacturers, logistics companies and fast-food chains.

This is very valuable information, thank you. Most of us only ever have the chance to experience the situation from the vantage point of one gender. Are you in the US, or what?

Sadly there are many ways to experience negative social expectations at work. Several of my formerly heavy-set colleagues have observed the perception of their competence being a result of their weight loss. Most of the cis men I know use a combination of testosterone, Ozempic, hair plugs, lifts in their shoes, etc.

I don’t blame them; Perception is everything.

Really? Mine is that companies value experience less.

Ageism is a significant issue in tech as well. I've had friends with decades of experience who were turned away with comments like the employer wanting someone to "grow with the company" or that they had "too much" experience. These phrases often serve as code for ageism, which is incredibly hard to prove.

Zuckerberg famously said something like "younger people are smarter," which was a mistake to say out loud, but many employers unfortunately believe it. Even millennials are starting to age out.

I think the major thing stopping people from just going their own way is healthcare coverage. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

I wonder if I can hack a business model that somehow provides healthcare but also gathers together sourced projects, and freelancers to bid on building them, while also getting healthcare. (And if you opt out of healthcare, you can take the difference. Maybe.) It may not result in 100% employment, but it could potentially provide a source of income while looking for something more fulltime. And I would help coordinate, while also vetting people.

Also, not sure if related to the difficulty in tech, but it might depend on your ethnicity, and not in the way you might think: https://fox11online.com/news/nation-world/major-us-companies...

I think a lot of engineers just want to engineer. Leading a startup quickly becomes mostly business stuff like finance, marketing, sales, hiring, etc. You need a business model, not just tech know-how. Starting your own business is definitely not the same job as staff engineer at an established business. It’s not for everyone.

i agree. Tying healthcare to employment limits things in several ways. What if, instead of starting my own business, i wanted to work 2 different part time jobs for 2 different employers? Maybe 1 of them is a rather low-paying job at a non-profit, and another is some tech-related job...well, even if enough of my poay is covered between both jobs, what would i do about healthcare? Yes, i know about the Affordable Care Act, but its been watered down by the powers that be who don't care about proper healthcare for everyone, etc. I think if the ACA in its original form were to have been launched, maybe it would have set us on a better trajectory - at least for more universal coverage which isn't tied to employment...then, at that point, Americans can choose their own adventure from an employment perspective (assuming they have the proper skills for whichever career adventure they undertook) - either work for someone else (or work for several different bosses), or work for themselves.

Not that great. And it's not that cheap.

You're better off working somewhere, quitting, using the COBRA (1200-2k+ for fam), when it runs out getting another job, quitting, rinse repeat.

IMO, people want way too much fucking money.

Looking at the numbers for the decline in spending power over time is sobering.

1) While A.I. may now be only adding 10-20% of productivity gains, the rapid pace of improvement leaves open the possibility that tha gains can be soon much more than that. So, instead of scaling your company now, if you can afford to, wait out a bit and see where this goes.

2) Even though much of BigTech is clawing back WFH, startups aren't as much. And once you introduce WFH to your culture and processes, it is hard to reason with the idea that you should pay $200K/year for an engineer when it can cost you a fraction (possibly 20-50% of that) to hire them remotely from another country, when also nowadays most of these remote employees are more than willing to work in EST/PST timezones. This used to be the case before COVID, but now many more startups have accepted and adapted to the idea of WFH.

3) While advanced skillsets and deep experience is necessary in many (but not most) startups, and while these skills are more difficult to find in India or Pakistan, the reality is, for many, many tech companies, most of the work doesn't require top-notch skills. You don't need a top 99% percentile in frontend engineering skills for a 1-year-old "name whatever category" app. And with the recent rise of focus on profitability, frugality, and the difficulty in fund-raising, being cognizant of cost per talent is now a thing.

I think Elon and Vivek's comments are more nuanced than they are taken. Elon, given he's at the cutting edge of engineering, must be having difficulty hiring top-99.9%-percentile talent against BigTech, and wants to open the pool of these types of talent from elsewhere. I don't think he wants H1Bs for React Native engineers. I am interpreting his comments as "I want to suck-in all A.I. researchers into America".

If they are, they have the platform to provide that nuance. Take a look at the public H1B data for Tesla (disclaimer it doesn't tell the full story), it does not seem like they are vying for the top-99.9%.

It seems odd we're giving billionaires the benefit of the doubt. They are positioning themselves to win, and that's totally fine in the system we're in, but let's not assume they are friends of the working class.

a. Note that "outside of the US" covers more than India and Pakistan. Google, Microsoft, Meta, etc. all have sizeable research or R&D centers in France, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, UK, etc. Most of these countries have engineers of a level comparable (better by some metrics, worse by others) to US engineers.

b. I've known several top-notch programmers from India. One of them is an important contributor to the Linux kernel, another to the core of Firefox. I have no clue how common that is, but be wary of stereotypes.

While this approach is self-serving, it makes sense. He could acquire that top talent today if he was willing to pay for it—people would leave their current jobs for a pay upgrade. But he's not willing to do that. So, he needs more candidates.

Except, you get what you pay for.

If someone is good then they are able to compete for more highly paid positions and therefore aren't working for 20% of the salary.

So in the end you shoot yourself in the foot, especially in startups where crappy code leads your team to work at a snails pace as your code becomes a spaghetti tangled mess. Then, once it does you end up hiring the expensive guys to come in as consultants to try to get back to what you could have avoided in the first place. Then you have to hope that in the meantime you haven't had any major security issues...

X Corp pays 150k for swe i in san francisco.

I'd be happy with the starting salary, but not there.

* End of ZIRP

* Musk's twitter firing spree being watched & emulated by others. i.e. there was rest & vest happening & execs realised some fat can be cut

* Bootcamp generation has moved beyond entry level and is now competing with more established players

* Entire thing just naturally goes in waves

* More fractured/specialised field. Language/Framework/Job description feels like things are more granularly sliced these days

* AI whether real or illusionary has some execs focused on things other than "lets hire humans"

There’s really no need to call this out repeatedly as if something sinister is happening. Despite ongoing efforts, the overwhelming majority of tech workers are… white males. So yes, the largest number of voices complaining about joblessness are unsurprisingly going to be white males.

It’s not totally unexpected, though. Unlike us white males, most of them haven’t been trained from birth to not prefer candidates that look like them.

If you disagree though, I challenge you to go on linkedin and randomly choose 10 asian hiring managers from tech companies and then the demographics of the people who work for them.

> In 2021, Hispanic, Asian and Black people made up a vast majority of the added workers

Been on the job hunt since October 1, and have done hundreds of applications, yet only spoken to 3 companies, and made it past the hiring manager once.

I’m a technical product manager with 10+ years and most recently was head of product at a healthtech company. It seems like none of my experience or background matters for the initial screen.

The most frustrating part has been spending time to update a resume and a cover letter to get a rapid rejection obviously done via AI. The fastest rejection I’ve received was 2 minutes.

It is at the point where the information-asymmetry between company and applicant is so high that I don’t think it is worth the time or effort to craft a customized resume and cover letter to match the job description. Not even with the “help” of LLMs.

The promise of Remote hiring now is proving to be a double-edged sword. It can be easier to get hired, but it means competing in an almost global applicant pool.

As a way to keep me occupied I’m building a personal tool to journal my work history and use the journal as a source to leverage an LLM to customize my resume and cover letter to a job description that sounds like me. Just need to keep the momentum up for both the continued job hunt and personal projects.

Though its starting to wear on me.

But take that away, and as I mentioned, you’re now competing against the entire world. I've worked with talented people in Eastern Europe and Asia who could easily do my job for a quarter of the pay. I really don’t want to compete against that.

All the friends who moved their families to farms in Iowa to be near family and enjoy the low cost of living? I’d be terrified that if I ever lost my job, I’d have to search far and wide for one of those scarce remote positions, and there’s no way I’d get my Bay Area salary now.

Plus, now that my kids are in local schools in Iowa and my wife is deeply connected with the local extended family, there's no way I could move back to the Bay unscathed.

Same result for the job hunt progress but persisting still.

I appreciate the feedback greatly. I’m sure there is a way to tell the story better.

Everyone highlighted the starting salaries of lawyers, but those figures applied mainly to outliers in BigLaw. Many graduates found themselves with $150k in debt, working $60k associate jobs in major cities. It can take a decade or more before you start earning the kind of money you were promised at graduation.

Look at the published diversity data on the Apple website, the company is now 50% Asian in North America (they stopped publishing the data after 2022 but internally that’s the number now), because it’s cheaper to hire H1B’s and they can’t leave the company.

It’s not surprising that Americans are having trouble finding jobs right now, they are being squeezed by both DEI and cheap labor from abroad.

Break down a hypothetical scenario:

1. Post a job, anyone can apply.

2. Candidate applies, goes through the hiring process, the team likes them and wants to make an offer.

3. Not a woman or PoC so not allowed to make an offer yet.

So at this point lets say you go out and interview a woman or PoC.

a. If you like the woman or PoC and want to give them the job, then the first person was discriminated against because if they had been a different race or gender they would have got the job.

b. If you don't give them the job then you can check the box saying you interviewed the diverse candidate, but this is at best purely performative because the other outcome was discriminating against the first person.

Logically, it is impossible to have this policy and not be breaking both the spirit and letter law in my opinion.

Also the implication of "diverse managers hire diverse teams" is that the diverse managers will discriminate based on race and gender.

Edit: To some degree it's a variation of the same old goals/metrics spiel. Ideally you'd have managers who want to give URMs a chance. In practice creating this metric to force it makes nothing better but likely everything worse for everyone in the system.

This is a nice way of saying that we are breaking the law.

underrepresented minority

(Not from USA so I don't know many diversity acronyms)

reach out to former coworkers or friends and ask for referrals. YMMV, but I do not think it is at all that bleak.

On that note, being in a larger city and doing in-person networking is a much different game than trying to apply online from afar. Plus, I've heard a lot about how useless online applications have become due to AI, ghost jobs, bad HR practices, etc. It makes me wonder if returning to the "come in to the office and drop off an application" days would be better for everyone.

I moved AUS->UK for family reasons, didn’t start applying till we landed and settled. Had a remote contract signed within two months at “big tech” for 97th percentile income locally.

20ish apps total, only 5ish got past resume screening, bombed one, turned down two, one couldn’t afford me, one accepted, no referrals, only applying for Sr IC roles, ~30yo, ~10yoe, no dei, admittedly have a degree unlike op

All up I was left doubting the jobs downturn, anecdote ofc :shrug:

Networking is the best way to find jobs nowadays. Bar none.

The only guaranteed way for the interview stage was through referrals.

I never found cold applying to be particularly useful, even during the best hiring times, so I always read these accounts of how bad the market is because someone sent their resume to X number of companies to be a bit useless in judging the market as in my experience that never really worked.

1. Incumbent programmers became more productive thanks to GPTs. A shop stopped hiring for junior, mid-career positions.

2. Other shops (small and medium) take it further and layoff 10% of the labor, mostly junior guys, to be replaced with GPTs.

3. Another shop (recognizable name in HN) made some offers to strong candidates, and they took the offers without negotiation. Quite unusual in the light of the past decade.

4. The ones that I wanted to hire or got hired at other shops: the going total comp was 500k - 1.5m USD/annum at senior or staff level. And this range applied to outside the bay area as well.

Talking to some headhunters -- we do see a strong hiring market at the senior level or niche markets (e.g. low latency numerical systems), but the junior levels are definitely seeing a transition. My (very obvious now) running hypothesis is that GPT is influencing the market.

I personally haven't observed any systematic or overt racism implied by OP; I do not recall race explicitly coming up in any of the discussions, but yes there is a large pool of foreign-born engineers who are willing to take a lower pay (who are just as productive, especially with GPT), so perhaps this is what the OP's circle is observing.

On a related note, I read an early research showing the impact of GPT on customer service staff productivity. GPT greatly improved the new/bottom performers but did not impact senior/top performers; a result that fits my intuition of how GPT works. I believe that a similar thing is happening at an industrial scale in tech.

I make no moral judgement here. At least on my end, the market is simply acting in line with supply and demand. Nevertheless, my sympathies for those in an unsuccessful quest.

The problem is that I work best as a lone wolf, and that's not how software is done nowadays. For good reason, I might add, so I am not complaining.

Don't make my mistake and learn your soft skills.

https://gavinhoward.com/2024/06/my-programming-journey/

https://gavinhoward.com/2023/02/why-i-use-c-when-i-believe-i...

If I could go back, I would have started working in C and building (reinventing) all the other ideas. Building your own language and compiler surely is the just fruits of an earnest programming life.

It's not unlike plain Javascript where code patterns become the unit of work [1][2], where keywords in other languages would otherwise suffice.

The shelves have books on C and Deitel, hacking, drawing, and architecture too. I hope some of them sort of combine. I don't know the recipe to bring about a kernel hacker, but hope it can all be absorbed in a decade or two.

[1] Reliable Javascript (2015)

[2] Javascript Patterns (2010)

> Got engaged. Made a stupid mistake on my wedding day and was left at the altar. I deserved it.

What happened?

[1]: https://gavinhoward.org/2023/06/let-me-cure-your-impostor-sy...

I took a look at your LinkedIn. If I were a hiring manager, I'd be concerned that in the last 8 years you mostly stayed at each company for a year or less and that your longest tenure was 2 years. That would most likely make me pass on your resume.

Personally id have questions about anything sub 2, but seeing 2 or more 3s would be enough for me to ignore a short stint or two.

Fresh grads in most other fields aren't doing either, but at least they aren't oversaturated as badly as CS is. Only ones doing fine are medical and social work professionals.

In Montreal there are plenty of offers paying ~90k CAD/year ( 62k USD/year ) for 15+ years of experience.

There are lot of job listings in Montreal, and those positions are real. Problem is that the pay makes those positions undesirable.

The second problem is that no one hires junior developers. My friend's kid finishing CS studies in May 2025 and prospect for jobs are not good.

It seems like the difficulty of finding a job is in the second mode. But the people who had jobs in that mode are hesitant to apply in jobs corresponding to the first mode, not only because the pay gap is substantial, but it can also be bad for one's resume and perhaps less satisfying intellectually.

[1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

This seems like a stable (though undesirable) equilibrium, and I do not have a solution.

I think this one of the reasons for the popularity of H1B, as this new normal isn’t worldwide yet.