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Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 18, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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The market currently is godwaful.

When I was looking for my first job, things were good enough that you had recruiters advertising for jobs in batches. You would see things like "5x Node Developer" or "3x Python Developer" and substantially more jobs overall. You even saw junior jobs. None of that is true anymore. Jobs are much rarer across the board, almost always advertised at mid-senior or above. In the two months I've been following the market so far, I've seen about 3 junior jobs total. Granted, employers were already phasing out junior/graduate positions in favour of outsourcing or talent poaching pre covid, but recent events have expedited that massively.

Part of the cause is that, as one of few industries still permitted to operate the Covid Response, all spending and attention went into tech, leading to a bloated sector extremely vulnerable to cutting off free money. My job was made possible only by magic investor money, the company did not make a profit for the entire time I was there. I cannot yet say whether this trend is permanent or will be better when the line go up types decide to lower interest rates. I fucking hope not. Making a computer do my bidding is the only thing I'm any good at ;_;

I do not think AI will have a substantial impact as other factors. I tried tools like Copilot back when they were first coming out. They were useful extremely intelligent, auto-completes but didn't replace the two important parts of software development: paring down what it is you need to make to a deliverable and saying no to things that aren't worth doing. I think its impact will still be noticable and people who don't integrate tools into their work will be outcompeted by people who do.