I tell the younger generation the same thing. Save, invest, max 401k, before you go off and party. Your older self will thank you.

I don't really have any advice for the present. We're in a storm, so do what you need to weather it. If there's any downtime you do have, use it to prepare for when (if?) the market bounces back:

1. Network. Nothing serious but just get to know people in your area. Keep in contact and they might one day have an in for some work.

2. work on personal projects. They aren't being looked at now, but it'll help you stand out when the market corrects itself.

3. consider some adjacent skillsets. At some point, if this last longer than any of us expect, it may be best to vouch for yourself. learning some graphic design can help you sell your own apps or make websites for others. Learning some art can help you sell games. embrace the generalization and be able to take small products from start to finih by youself. If you don't want to get completely out, you may want to start shaping your career around being your own boss instead of relying on others to employ you.

4. take care of your physical health. I don't know your body, and you may already be doing this. But it's always important to remind people (especially in a field like tech) that sometimes a breath of fresh air and 10 minutes of walking can make all the difference. Don't let yourself get cooped up.

Best of luck out there.

I can't do graphic design or UI design more generally but I absolutely love to develop software and work with tech. But I am trying to diversify because I don't know what else to do. As a result my resume puts me as a generalist which doesn't exactly help my chances... But eh. I am definitely trying to work with what I have, it's frustrating and really demotivating though.

Hustle culture.

Post college, it was about “what have you done?” vs “where did you go?” and so I demonstrated several projects I had done for the passion. A game engine. A graphics website community. Some novel networking libraries. A MUD. Finally, a database. By the time they got to the mud and database they were ringing me non-stop.

All of these projects done over a weekend or two while working other jobs to afford rent. Call centers are a personal level of hell.

Listening to Dave Ramsey on YT gets me amazed on how some people can be so irresponsible and accumulate debt on credit cards and cars they can't afford.

This is the entire problem. It's called job hunting, not job fishing. I.e. you should be seeking out specific exact positions that you know are worthwhile and tailoring yourself for them, not casting a net and hoping.

Hunting is still your better bet overall. figure out who has a need and position yourself to fill it. This also takes a lot more time to pull off than just sending 1000 resumes, and there is no guarantee. there is generally a mix of course, you start by casting a net to see what is there, and then when there is a potential bite you start tailoring your resume to that potential. Not all leads will result in something. Who you know is always important.

I like tech; my challenge now is finding a gig with interesting work and a good work-life balance and p75 pay. That, and knowing when I actually have enough net worth to have more freedom. The problem is you never think it's enough, but not because of greed, but because of fear.

At least you could have the decency to debate my comment instead of a feeble insult. My condolences.

Of course your job/boss matters. Some are worse than others.

When the work didn't suck and the product didn't suck.

Please, if you ever want any respect from anyone younger than you ever again in your entire life, do not say those words again.

I’m not old. Just wise.

I’m not avoiding the fact that the economy is fucked. I’m fully aware. It’s up to you how much you’re willing to continue to pay or what you’re willing to sacrifice. It sucks, but the only thing you can control is yourself.

I graduated 10 years ago and it’s a day and night difference. Whatever worked for me in 2015 will not work for a fresh grad today, the game is completely different.

I graduated 20 years ago and it was different when you graduated just as it is different now. Things change. Economies change. Life changes. The advice I give is simply because that’s the only thing you can change. You and your habits.

I’m all for revolution.

I’m all for socialism w/ a sprinkle of free market capitalism.

I’m all for the better good of all fellow humans.

I empathize with fresh graduates who were told there would be ample jobs in their fields when they graduate 4-6 years from when they started. I struggle to empathize with those who see there are no jobs and do nothing. Anything is better than nothing.

Why is it such a problem for you that people talk about it openly? Why the need to pretend that everyone can have this under control? It seems to me that your advice is just about making you feel better about the situation, about pretending to ourselves that all issues are individual failures, that the world is fair.

I do not see people who argue with you calling for revolution, I am seeing them trying to talk about objective state of the world. You seem to be rejecting that description, because it involves things you or them cant control.

I’m not blaming anyone or saying it’s anyone’s failure. I’m simply saying the only thing you can control is you and so it’s up to you to master your habits and desires so that you can afford a future you want.

> ’m simply saying the only thing you can control is you and so it’s up to you to master your habits and desires so that you can afford a future you want.

Nah, there is no possibility "future you want" in your advice. It is just about hiding the reality creating vague feeling that people can control things. Even if they cant.

What you are actually saying is that there is no hope for change. Everybody knows your advice wont lead to a change. Worst, if one believes to your advice, they will vote for politicians who created current situation. Because they are the ones constantly blaming individuals for result of policies they pushed for.

Still, people have agency. If one doesn't see it like that in relation to their material stance then there must be a lot of things that are simply disconsidered from the list of possible options, for whatever reason. Nobody said the world is fine as is and that the blame is somehow all on the ones that are in unsavory positions now. The world is not fine (and never was, for a lot of folks that almost nobody talkes about). It's winter time in this industry and the new hatchlings have their future in question. Yes, there are factors out of their control (like LLMs) that led to this winter, but there's also the colective decision for a lot of kids of pursuing these cushy well-paid office jobs that made things worse by oversaturating the market. Now, of course that, being saddled with student debt and heavily invested by an already acquired degree, to consider the long-term career prospects outside the industry seems like a non-starter, yet it may be exactly what the labor market (and younglings' individual well-being) needs. Such a decision is just of the same kind as the one that brought them here. That's agency on the individual level. And lastly, it's best for everyone to understand, internalize, and accept (the more the better) the fact that nobody else should be expected to step in and fix things for you. Yes, there are many people trying to make the world a better place (as there are many who don't care), there are also people in power that are even supposed to do the same, yet if they manage or not to make it better for you is not a given. That's, whenever it happens, just a bonus. The rest is up to you, the adult.

I think what would be useful for them is to have very concrete examples of what fields to pursue. I wish I knew myself.

You have two options. Continue to point fingers and complain and be broke, or start putting $100/mo in VOO and save what little money you have for your future?

I know it sucks. I know income inequality is huge. I know the only way out of this is to put in sweat equity. I know the only way to put food on the table is to have a second job at a gas station. I’ve been there. However, as much as you DON’T want to hear it - the only way out of your mess is by you working your way out of your mess.

> You have two options. Continue to point fingers and complain and be broke, or start putting $100/mo in VOO and save what little money you have for your future?

The imaginary person you're trying to give this advice to graduated from university eighteen months ago and has been living in their parents' house ever since, applying for jobs non-stop. Their income is $0 per month. They are entirely unable to apply your advice; applying your advice is something they aspire to.

It’s not a career. It’s just a job.

I'm pretty well off but my friends are in that siutation

Some folks I know died in those situations.

That is why it is so important to save and invest.

> the only way out of your mess is by you working your way out of your mess.

Third option is revolution. Could be violent, could be passive like not starting families, complaining on the internet, scrolling tiktok as long as the benefits and body allow, and suicide if necessary.

It is possible for too much of the benefits of working having too high of a likelihood of being captured by rent seekers to not make the work worth it. In old times, the lack of birth control made people have to work more due to needing to support kids, but if I didn’t have kids, I could get by with a much lower standard of living.

Just grow up. Bootstraps! I did it, why can't you?

Well first off, you didn't do it, you got fucked up the ass and asked for more. Your parents and their parents lived in an America where one person could own a home, multiple cars, and care for a large family. They lived in an America where layoffs did not exist, where shareholders were at the bottom of the totem pole, and where companies like GE prided themselves in how much money they gave to their employees.

We now live in an America where GE has been run into the ground, dragged through hell, revived, and then damned again, only for the demon that did it to be praised as a Capitalist God - a template, an alchemist of money, who could seemingly create value out of thin air.

Of course, nobody has stepped back and asked what "value" we're measuring. Not that it matters, because whatever you measure, GE don't got it.

You could have been better off, but you weren't. You're complacent enough, but baby this train goes downtown. There's no reversing course. However hard it was for you, it will only get harder.

Of course, this is big picture stuff. Small picture, can you do things to help your situation? Of course you can. But those things become harder, they become rarer, they become more elusive.

Just get a job and you'll be good! Oh wait no, that doesn't work anymore. Just go to college and you'll be good! No wait, that doesn't work either. Well, just own a home, that's the path to financial freedom! Um, well, actually no not that either. Well just invest in the stock market!

Yes, great idea! I wonder how long that will last! I wouldn't hold your breath.

I graduated right before the collapse in 2008, and I’ve spent the last 17 years hustling, scraping, and clawing to make, save, and invest every dollar I could. It wasn’t easy, and after a divorce and a recent layoff, it’s still not. Particularly in one of the most expensive cities in the world, with kids and child support.

I worry a lot about my kids and their future economic prospects. I don’t want them to suffer, but the reality is that suffering comes for all of us, and saving and investing has been good advice for millennia. Blaming others and refusing to take responsibility for your own life and predicament has never been good advice. I hope my kids have the strength of character to resist the learned helplessness you’re offering here.

I'm older than you and now doing fine AND able to save/invest but after multiple once-in-a-lifetime events that reset all of my progress each time, the last thing I need to hear from some out-of-touch old person is bullshit avocado toast pull yourself up by your bootstraps comments.

Both options require effort and discipline. If someone working two jobs can’t make rent, then who is to blame for it not working out? Society? The government? Your landlord? Who? Who do you be angry towards if not yourself?

It’s out of touch because they are out of touch. I was out of touch. We all go through this and realize this is it. This is all there is. This is life. Welcome to being fully grown.

As I’ve said before - I’m here for the revolution if that’s what it takes. I’ll be on the front. I’m not rich. I’m not a home owner. I just know there’s only one path carved and they’re at the bottom of the slide hoarding it, taxing us more for each body down.

Capitalism is a disease but it’s been that way for multiple millennia. Humans vs humans. Survival of the fittest. Stuff they don’t teach in private school. Only the school of hard knocks. So, again, who do we blame, if not ourselves? Why do we buy the boomer products? Why do we subscribe to the boomer media? Why do we put up with it?

And no one here said anything about avocado toast or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Sounds like you're just making assumptions and ranting against a strawman.

Serious question: if your kids were in the situation you're talking about, struggling to pay rent, and you couldn't help them financially, what advice would you give them? What would you hope they'd do? I'm genuinely curious.

Yesterday my BIL threw a perfectly working tower PC in the recycling because he couldn't find anyone (not even a charity shop) to take it. Last time I was at e-waste I saw half a dozen 42 inch TVs that I'm willing to bet we're working.

However we were wealthy in one way: we had a stable home, and optimism. I may have had old clothes, one pair of worn shoes and a 4th-hand uncool bicycle, but there was no question of ever losing the roof over my head. And there was a future that looked like it was full of possibilities. "Stuff" was getting cheaper and more available. I remember our family being able to afford our first microwave oven. Our first VCR (1991). We didn't get rich, things got cheaper.

Today, it's like we're looking at the future as if we're already post-peak, and it's all downhill from here. There's tons of stuff around but nobody wants it. People have also lost the positive attitude, optimism. It'll get you through a lot of bad times. Years and years of shit. Lose optimism, and it's all bleak no matter how big your TV is.

If I could choose a safe to be reborn in, I'd take "our" poverty of the past over this.

Everyone is worried about AI for good reason but if he's the promise is true then we see significant productivity improvements.

The pie might be shared out worse than even today but there would be more pie.

We are in a period of deglobalisation, but also a period of reorganisation. Today's supply chain is less efficient than 2021s. We are materially poorer as a result. But after the dust settles, it will be a lot more efficient than it is right now. Even with no ai.

Potentially we are in a dip. Stuff for worse, but it can get better.

The optimism decline feels like it really started around 2001, and the downward curve has steadily continued ever since, down and down. Worst of all, it seems completely warranted, even if you try to look at it as objectively as possible, disabling news-headline-induced emotions as we're all prone to. The world has gotten too complex, everything too intertwined, making for an increasingly volatile and dangerous system.

And besides that major trend, it's also just many of the smaller things getting worse by the year - enshittification of both physical and digital goods, declining government services and so on.

You can't save your way out of rent being 70, 80+% of your paycheck. For my area, minimum wage is $18 and your best hope for rent is sharing a $3k 2 bedroom apartment. quick napkin math suggests $2400 take home pay and ~$1800 eaten up between the rent split, utilities, gas, and the most basic rice and beans diet of "groceries". Not even including potential health insurance or car notes or student loans.

If you don't have the fortune of a family who'd house you for free/dirt cheap then you don't have much to save. You're already sacrificing for the present.

There's no escape in the US from the problem. It's either California with weird complicated property tax laws that make no one sell, Texas with unlimited and disgusting urban sprawl, Florida with shoddy construction, or NYC with big headaches tied to strict building incentives for tax breaks.

The answer could be ugly - less regulation, but now you're going red and not blue, which is very much the opposite attitude that many pro urbanization folks tend to be.

I'm not sure, other than I think the issue is that it's not Not Enough Building. It's that we allow investors to buy everything up. In NYC this year, 40 percent of condo transactions were without financing contingency. Explain that one.

401k max is $24,500. How much do you expect a person to earn to be able to max it out? And what percentile income is that at the bottom and top of the age range you consider “young”?

https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-by-age-calculator/

Tldr: you are telling almost every 20 to 30 year old to not party.

If you know for sure exactly how long you will live and how good your quality of life will be then the advice to max out early is probably good. However you don't know - average advice is good for average but if you are an outlier it isn't useful and you don't know. As such you need to compromise and part of that means you enjoy a little more now when you know you can, as opposed to a lot more in the future if you live that long. Exactly what they means is personal of course, but this conflict is why I would suggest a more modest retirement.

Besides, once you have a healthy 401k, you’ll realize there’s things you can do with it in the short term. Like borrow for a down payment. Use it for hospital bills. Funerals. Hardship withdrawals. Even a Roth has this. Saving vs spending will always be the story of the grasshopper and the ants.

What they have to avoid is cashing it out when times get hard.

I’m not telling you to forgo partying. I’m telling you to pay yourself first, before you do. Don’t max out a credit card for a trip. Don’t cover the table’s check when you only have $200. Be responsible, but still have fun.

Given rent, saving for house downpayment, student loan payments, auto loan payments, and possible childcare/healthcare costs, I don’t think we live in the same reality (based on income statistics). Perhaps you are only referring to doctors/software engineers/lawyers/IB/PE employees?

>I’m not telling you to forgo partying. I’m telling you to pay yourself first, before you do. Don’t max out a credit card for a trip. Don’t cover the table’s check when you only have $200. Be responsible, but still have fun.

This is very different than:

>Save, invest, max 401k, before you go off and party.

These things all come after savings, not before. If you can't afford them using post-saving money, then you need to get a better job, or a cheaper living conditions. Easier said than done, I totally agree, especially nowadays. But that's the mentality you need to really take saving seriously.

People still have the power. Always have. They just need a reason to wield it.

The old need a way to maintain a socioeconomic order where they can continue to get labor from the young, but demographics are going to make that harder and harder.

Why can't you just admit that millions of young people are being intentionally screwed out of what we consider to be a basic standard of living?

Saving for retirement doesn’t necessarily mean 401k but you can borrow from your 401k for down payment assistance so you really should be saving for your eventual retirement from day 1.

Don't forget too that inflation works for you! If you save and get in a nice house early and the STAY THERE (I can't emphasize enough how important this is - sometimes life forces you to move, but avoid it), your payments measured against inflation will go down - just put that difference into a 401k (that is don't do a cash out refinance along the way as so many do) and in 30 years the house is paid off and your have a great retirement account.

When you are in the early years the above plan looks impossible, but time is your friend.

In all honesty, when was the last time you tried to rent a place to live? My brother makes decent money in his mid-20's and _still_ wound up living out of his car for a couple months when his attempt to find something cheaper backfired.

Plans fail. Have backup plans. Attempting to min max has disadvantages too. My advice has always come from experience and never “this is what they say you should do”. I would not be so presumptuous.

In a couple years when things recover (or at least they find a job) it starts to be good advice. Even then I question max 401k - time works for the young and so a maxed 401k makes for too much money in retirement and not enough to enjoy now. Save for retirement yes, but max is too much when you are young - and if you keep saving will always be too much. Max 401k is good for the rich, or those who didn't start young and so their accounts are way behind.

Except the 401k is so tax advantaged that you are foolish to not use it as your basis for financial security. Pre-tax money + employer contributions mean 401k is far and away the fastest method of building up a significant chunk of capital to protect yourself from hardship. Yes there are penalties for early withdraw, but they come out far less than what you would alternately be able to build up with just post-tax savings from your paycheck.

So you read nothing about how graduates during 2008 pretty much had forever stunted careers?

They aren't put on the streets, but it's clear some very long term damage is being done to people simply as a matter of bad luck.

Myself included. Graduated in '08, had to work various minimum wage jobs in retail for several years because no one was hiring. I'm just now at a point in my career, nearing 40, where I should have been at 28.

Degree doesn't matter much when your only work experience is 5 years of working at Starbucks, and you barely have personal projects because you're too busy working 2 jobs to just to survive.

Those of us who suffered through that time period barely recovered, and many didn't recover at all. It shaped an entire generation.

it was a horrible period and I have many friends who are in the same boat especially those not in software

Perhaps true if you go east far enough, seems objectively wrong for the majority of the west though. Honest question, if you think this and it isn't just rage bait.. what data supports it? Scott Galloway disagrees and offers hard data, and goes as far as calling it intergenerational theft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJ4hkpQW8E

Much of the (American) millennials generation believes a story that they’re worse off. I feel it is a convenient story for people to tell themselves and blame someone else for their perceived losses. But I pulled up several articles supporting my claim with a quick search, even though the opposite narrative is more widespread.

Example article about how inflation adjusted net worth is higher for millennials than it was for boomers at the same age:

https://www.newsweek.com/millennials-financially-better-off-...

Galloway isn’t necessarily wrong in the individual data points he raises. But if you look at the sum of all of the factors - higher rents, more student debt, etc but also the positive things - the net worth in the end is higher for millennials. And remember this is inflation adjusted already.

Lots of research shows about a 8-10% gap, that only at very specific ages finally achieved parity.

The consequence of this is a difference in wealth building, economic security, and family planning for millions.

And even homes are now sieving into institutional buyers.

https://medium.com/newco/your-financial-shock-wealth-4845e6d...

Joe has a 300k house with 100k equity and 200k mortgage. He has 100k in stocks in a 401k. Net worth negative 100k.

Pete has $300 in his cheques account, and isn't eligible for loans or mortgage. Net worth positive $300

Obviously Joe is richer than Pete though.

Net worth = assets - liabilities

Yeah, because Joe’s net worth is $200,000 and Pete’s is $300

House equity = current value - mortgage balance

You subtracted the mortgage twice, so your math is off by $200,000.00

This is why middle class people often feel poor than those who are poor: they make more money and have more in total, but they also have large bills and if something happens those bills will catch up with them fast.

if you have 100K in equity and owe 200K on your mortgage, then you’re net -100K on your house

that combines with the 100K in the retirement account to produce a net worth of $0

Where is my mistake?

(Another way of thinking about equity, specifically, is it is the real estate contribution to net worth, because it is what is left when you subtract the real estate liability (mortgage) from the real estate asset (value of house). That's why you shouldn't subtract the mortgage from the equity: equity is what's left after you've already subtracted the mortgage.)

(Edit: Adjusted sign in first equation to subtract mortgage. It's probably more technically accurate to keep it as addition and consider the mortgage to be a negative value, but I believe it's more straightforward and intuitive for most people as it is now represented.)

Most all else would have inflated or depreciated.

Remember you won't live forever (at least not to current medical knowledge, you can bet otherwise if you want), and you can't take it with you (according to most religions). Thus once you have retirement covered and emergency savings you should be spending everything you earn. You should have enough money left at the end of the month to afford the things you buy at the end of the month, but there is no point in any more, enjoy life with what you earn. (donating to charity counts as enjoying life!)

However, there are certainly a lot of conflicting studies and data out there. And to be honest, it doesnt feel true given how much young people complain on the internet. Its hard to see which asserion is correct. It isnt necessarily correct just because one study says its so.

[Edit] also inflation is calculated based on average consumption. So you will notice that toys, clothing and electronic devices (TVs, cooking robots), all cheaper and cheaper (due to enshitiffication and quality decrease) count more for inflation than education, cars, housing and probably a lot of other stuff a 25-35 yo care more about.

A great recent example was the Australian decision to add capital gains on a primary residence as a profit (ie. negative expense) when calculating inflation. All of a sudden inflation was very reasonable despite the fact that established homeowners and their families were choosing between groceries and mortgage payments… but in terms of their net worth, YAY! They’re getting ahead!

They’re convinced they’ll time the next grift right. Who knows

The economy has been moving upward since 2013 - 12 years ago. What were you doing from 2013 to 2020?

I ask because I also graduated around ‘08. I’ve been a software developer since 2016. I’m currently a senior dev with almost a decade of experience.

There were really crappy years to start with, but I feel I’ve made up for it substantially.

My own parents graduated in the late 70s during a terrible economic recession.

It seems weathering economic recessions have been a tradition for several generations.

I still remember articles almost identical to the ones I see now; “this generation is screwed and there is no possible salvation.”

It’s getting old.

The current VP is a stupid redneck hick from Appalachia who … you can Google him.

Point is, one way of responding to regional decline (Appalachia was once the wealthiest part of America) is to move.

Though I wouldn't tell the rest what they should do. The guy I know had to live in MN for decades (where I met him) away from the rest of his friends and family - that is itself a large cost in lifestyle that I question if money makes up for.

What or who is the standard for where you “should have been at 28?”

https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/77/4/78...

>> Across a generation’s life course, early-life advantages are magnified through disparate occupational and social trajectories that lead to wide late-life disparities in financial and health resources, in a process first termed by Crystal and Shea as one of “cumulative advantage and disadvantage” (CAD; Crystal, 1982, 1986, 2020; Crystal et al., 1992, 2017; Crystal & Shea, 1990b; Dannefer, 1987, 1988). Dannefer (1987) described the trend of increasing inequality over the life course as the “Matthew effect,” applying a biblical dictum first used by Merton (1968), stating that “to he who has much, more is given, and to he who has little, even that is taken.” This ongoing process has also been described as an “obdurate tendency” for increasing inequality over the life course (Dannefer, 2020).

https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hy...

>Can you please provide a reference for the assertion you just made

>Sure, here it is: <link>

> 404, please double check

> I apologize for the mistake, I have double checked, here is the corrected link: <link>

> Still 404, please always double check a link by actually visiting and reading it

x5 before I gave up.

Cause garbage in, gets garbage out. With AI models being all the more rage in the coming years, unexperienced hires will prove many times more costly. (10x garbage with agents).

So companies are going to concentrate their worker base even more with experienced folks. They need fewer of them. Yes. But quality matters more than ever.

I really feel bad for the new graduates. For no fault of their own, the bar went up so high. Unless they’re a child prodigy doing some coding projects on the side since the age of 10 - no one will hire them. So how will they ever gain the experience they need?

Maybe, just maybe, we’ll see a reinvention of coding schools - that will now focus on fundamental and industry knowledge - imparted by other veterans, instead of teaching applied skills.

We’re not going to convince anyone to keep hiring software developers.

I think we ought to be keeping people trained and employed but it seems we’re not on the winning side here.

I doubt things will recover to 2018 levels. Too many new software devs coming out each year, too much AI, too little big company growth once everyone already has an internet computer in their hands. The Wild West is over and now the digital economy has entered the boring phase.

We should be the last occupation to be replaced by machines.

Maybe I’m stupid, but I’m stupidly optimistic.

I never understood this sentiment. We don't have a massive manual weaving industry anymore, 95%+ of people used to be farmers in 1900. Tech comes and replaces humans, and the transition can be extremely painful especially for the people replaced, but ultimately it's better than keeping people artificially employed in obsolete jobs.

(I don't think SWE will be obsolete, but even in this case I'd rather switch careers)

At a large enough scale, most people don't really move on, their lives are wrecked and they just suffer through them.

What's a software developer in their 30s, 40s, and 50s supposed to re-skill into? Take on debt for the rest of their lives and re-skill into a profession (if they can even afford to take several years out of their lives to go back to school)? Into blue collar work along with the salary cut for which they might not have the physical capabilities for?

There's no social system for providing the necessities for living.

The other side of it is skill. Human societies have lost knowledge before. We've had to rediscover various aspects of metallurgy before. We could lose the ability to understand the technology we've made if we trust everything to the LLMs. There are already vibecoders who don't even be able to review the code that it generates for them because they're starting to lose the critical faculties and skills to understand it.

But yeah, new graduates is going to suffer anyway.

And I'm scared of the collapse of the existing world order. Maybe we won't see a turn around for many years if it does collapse -- and we are already seeing many cracks on it.

Old staff will be exited. Especially senior and mid level management.

If you lose your job, you won't get the same comp again. The days of $500K TC are long behind us.

It's the era of downsizing and outsourcing while blaming AI.

None of this has anything to do with AI. That's just a scapegoat.

Google and Amazon are culling entire US teams and rebuilding them in Asia where the cost of labor is significantly lower.

The best thing ICs can do is fight for big tech monopolies to be broken up. (Call your reps leading up to the midterms.) If several members of the Mag 7 are broken up into smaller companies, that'll inject tons of energy back into the ecosystem and enable the wheels of competition and employment.

Bonus - if big conglomerates are fighting to pick up the pieces of a Ma Bell style dismantlement, they won't have time to manage teams 12 hours away.

Nothing against our colleagues in Asia. They're brilliant. But American companies built with American labor shouldn't shut us out in the cold while they reach record profits and continue to hollow out entirely new industries simply by outstretching their arms.

My theory: We had a crazy bubble of hiring during zero rate interest. We are living through a nasty correction. AI is moving the needle too, but it’s mostly being used as a scapegoat to save face and explain away cleaning up failed ZRIP yolo plans that didn’t pan out.

We’ve also haven’t had a serious recession since 2009. It feels like it’s only a matter of time :(

"This time it's different."

20 years ago China and India had a nascent tech industry. Now they're booming.

Talented folks all over the world - Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere - are working on hard problems.

> We had a crazy bubble of hiring during zero rate interest.

We did. This has had a tremendous impact, no doubt. But by the same coin, ZIRP has had half a decade to unwind at this point. There's other stuff going on. Tariffs, continued inflation, etc.

We're not the only industry offshoring. Hollywood has moved a lionshare of production overseas in the last 4 years. Graphics design and marketing... It's being shipped out at volume.

I was told that once video conferencing got good and internet and infrastructure became better in other places, "this time it will be different."

I was told once universities in other countries started pumping out a pool of great candidates, expats who worked for FAANGs in the US would go home to found their own companies using that pool, and those companies would take over the world. "this time it's different."

I was told during covid once everyone was remote, why would people not just hire the cheapest remote workers going forward? "This time it's different."

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely have seen more and more offshoring over time, but there's a huge inertia behind the US tech industry that's hard to change. The VC / startup ecosystem and all of it's resources have huge Bay Area inertia - it mostly hasn't even spread to the rest of the US, let alone the rest of the world, despite the cost of living and constrained talent pool in the Bay Area. There's something about getting a bunch of people with the same mindset in one spot and having them know each other, socialize with each other, make friends and networks with each other that still matters. Founders tend to build off the people and connections they know and are connected with personally.

I'm hoping it will take long enough to change for me to finish my career. We'll see. This time really may be different :).

EDIT: p.s. Agree totally it's way to complex to tell what's actually happening. The _impact_ of the end of ZRIP, the rise of AI, major tax changes on R&D amortization, and US tariffs pretty much landed at the same time, so who knows?

On the other hand, in the 2020s, India, Israel, most Eastern European states, Ireland, Costa Rica, and a couple others have launched industrial promotion subsidizes for software offshoring - often providing US$10k-30k per head in federal and local subsidizes along with subsidized office space and real estate and tax windows.

That along with the internal frictions of async work largely being ironed out due to the COVID remote work period along with an exodus of mid-level managers on work visas during the early pandemic layoffs which had an outsized impact on Indian, Chinese, and Eastern European techies in the US made offshoring much more cost competitive and effective than it was 25 years ago.

Putting your head in the sand saying it's no big deal is honestly very stupid if you are hoping to maintain your career for the next 5-10 years in any white collar job.

And it's only going to get even more competitive now that the Indian government is enacting labor reform laws to align Indian labor laws with China's [0], making it even more cost effective for businesses to offshore by reducing regulatory overhead [1].

[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-21/india-imp...

[1] - https://www.fortuneindia.com/business-news/tech-sector-expec...

This isn't true either in India or most of eastern europe.

Maybe you are confusing PLI for manufacturing? Altough even that's not on per head basis.

It is.

Wage arbitrage doesn't move the needle for offshoring once operating costs come to play, and outsourcing companies like EPAM, WITCH, and others juiced their margins by padding heavily, which further reduced the cost competitiveness of outsourcing without subsidies.

Czechia [0], individual Volvodships along with the federal government in Poland [1], state+center in India [2][3], Ireland [4], Romania [5], and others [6] dated list from KPMG which doesn't include state and local incentives) are all providing subsidies for GCCs now which include a payroll/per-head incentive depending on the amount spent in FDI, along with added additional subsidies per industry (eg. Life sciences GCCs get additional sets of subsidies versus a generic software GCC versus a VFX GCC).

The US has some of the weakest R&D tax incentives globally [6], with no payroll or financing incentives - only Vietnam, Philippines, Peru, and PNG are stingier, which has been a major role for why GCC expansion has been rapidly growing for the past few years.

That said, these incentives are primarily targeted at large employers becuase if you cannot provide at the minimum dozens of jobs, then the cost cannot be recouped over the long term by most subsidies. So mom-and-pop 3 person consultancies are ignored because in most cases they are parasites and large firms interested in opening large dedicated headcount offices are incentivized.

[0] - https://czechinvest.gov.cz/en/For-Investors/Investment-Incen...

[1] - https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/pl/pdf/services/for...

[2] - https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=93f90e07-581d...

[3] - https://inductusgcc.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/INDIAS-GC...

[4] - https://www.idaireland.fr/getmedia/4f70d494-8ec1-4e3d-b5a5-1...

[5] - https://kpmg.com/kpmg-us/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2021/global-rd...

When I came into the job market the rule of thumb was it would take 1 month/10k of salary to find a new job. Over time that moved to 1 month/20k of salary or so. Even then, someone making a FAANG type salary should be prepared to look for a ~year for a new job matching that salary. Being able to bounce from job to job while getting big raises along the way was the exception, and ZIRP only exacerbated it.

Around five times since 2007.

It goes for other places, too. Is the US's financial strength of today its mean, or is it where the UK was pre-Suez Crisis? Where Japan was in the 80s?

If I was a new college grad I’d stay away from programming, but that’s been true for a while regardless of offshoring, the job market is just too soft until managers figure out they are killing their senior engineer pipeline and go back to investing in people.

What about the people already in industry? What’s our play?

Live under your means and save as much as possible? Already doing it.

Learn a new trade? Does not feel realistic while working a demanding full time job already, but if things get bad enough, sure.

Use the political apparatus to protect my employment? The system is built to prevent me from doing that. Fighting the system very well could put my employment at risk, which defeats the whole “get what I can while I still can” plan, if I assume doom and gloom on the horizon. I’m also unlikely to actually change anything by taking that risk, so the ROI is horrible.

Is there some other outcome or plan of action here I’m not seeing?

>Live under your means and save as much as possible?

which, while obvious, isn't being done by all of us.

A part of me gets angry that collective action was so unpopular thanks to the view that it dragged down those who could excel individually. Every time I see software people act powerless in front of these steamrolling, enormous tech giants that control every facet of our lives, I think about how much power we had - and are on the verge of giving up.

I also try to confront the future, rather than turn a blind eye to it. Can I be happy and find self-actualisation without this identity and financial status? That's a question everyone should think about regardless of what happens.

If you hit FIRE, awesome, you’re free from ever caring about offshoring or RTO or AI or whatever again.

If you don’t hit it, you’re sitting on a pile of money when a rainy day comes.

a) getting really good at clarifying requirements

b) learning quickly, so their work quality is eventually higher than Cursor can work out in one shot.

This is also a pressure against hiring teams overseas: when the bottleneck is communication + taste, not raw implementation cycles, you'd rather have a small local team. And it's a pressure for high TC, because individuals now have much more leverage, although they need to master more skills to take advantage.

Many juniors can't even meet with a human interviewer. There's no point maximizing for interviews that never come. That's the issue.

>This is also a pressure against hiring teams overseas:

This seems to agree with the issue. a team of 100 becomes a team of 5 locals and 95 outsourced work. Maybe those 5 managers are better off, but we're still reducing the local workforce by 95%.

And I doubt the conditions of the remaining 5 are better than pre-outsourcing. You can't out-compensate burnout and QoL. Gen Z in particular seems to really be pushing against this mentality, so this strategy is limited in time even if it's working on Gen X/Millenials.

Junior engineers, i.e. people who have already been hired, can indeed fight back by getting really good at their jobs.

But you're right, it doesn't help you get hired if you can't even get an interview.

Having in couple hours unannounced meeting. My boss told me over private channel, that he just got fired. It’s very interesting and the home mortgage does not really help today. I was really good. Better than expected and accomplished few optional projects. Looks like it didn’t help again.

That was the bottleneck in the industry when it was in growth phase, it's a mature sector now and it's all about efficiency and profit now. Speed to market and product iteration speed isn't the most important thing anymore, there's not a lot of innovation taking place. Outside the actual novel AI specific companies out there, of course, there are a few other spots of growth and exceptional companies but largely the kings have been crowned.

I'm genuinely curious.

I've heard this argued the other way too. Seen it firsthand.

Fwiw, we've had good engineers switch to vibe coding and it's ruined their output.

From really solid systems to unmaintainable flocks of seagulls - nested if statements ten levels deep with no thought or care. From good engineers that are just dialing it in now.

We've had good engineers use vibe coding to save to time to work on their side hustles. Then go on to try to raise money for AI products.

I use to need myself to lead the project, customer management, design work and some development. I would add usually another developer to do some of the grunt work coding and usually a cloud architect to take care of infrastructure as code, security, etc.

Not that I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to do it all myself, I just didn’t have time. GenAI can definitely do CloudFormation, Terraform or the AWS CDK (ie using a high level language like Typescript instead of Yaml) and can do the code where I really don’t need two other resources or deal with the detailed requirements and coordination.

Before the pearl clutching starts about my not knowing how to code without AI. I’ve been coding consistently since 1986 when I was a hobbyist assembly language coder.

> We've had good engineers use vibe coding to save to time to work on their side hustles. Then go on to try to raise money for AI products.

It seems to be working…

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Uy2aWoeRZopMIaXXxY2E...

GenAI does not exist yet.

most people (read: MOST) working at X corp aren't going to be using AI to accelerate their work, they are going to "phone it in" like you said or buy themselves more time to do other stuff. i think with the onslaught of vibe and slop most people don't have a vested interest to go above and beyond to ensure quality as long as it works, even experienced devs. that's honestly probably what i'd be tempted to do.

where we see the most exponential gains will be people who are paid enough to care, smaller teams that have a direct vested interest in long term success (founding teams, etc.) or people paid to just clean up a mess.

hiring and the landscape will be super interesting to see in the next year or so. probably team structure will change drastically as well.

This sounds almost word for word like The Onion’s classic: Secretary Of Labor Assures Nation There Still Plenty Of Jobs For Americans Willing To Outwork Robots

[0] https://theonion.com/secretary-of-labor-assures-nation-there...

To be fair, I meant something a little different -- something like -- learn how to be a robot priest who can get it to follow the desperate prayers of humans. And, like, how to unstick the robot arm when it accidentally punches through a wall. Etc.

Not that that is particularly comforting, in an existential sense. Maybe buys you a couple years till you have to pivot again.

Instead they should start learning how to shoot guns and build pipe bombs.

Given the vibes of the community here: I guess I'll look for a Mad Max mask (I'll ofc keep performing my civic duties, though).

What would banning stock buybacks accomplish? Companies can still return capital to shareholders in the form of dividends.

If anything, all the businesses with the most long term growth have done the most buybacks because they are paying the employees in stock, which employees gladly accept because they bet the business will have long term growth.

And executive compensation is not vested until business targets are met a few years in the future.

If I am bonused on earnings per share, and I have a button to increase earnings per share mechanically (without needing to increase revenue or decrease costs), why wouldn't I push that button?

Can you share some evidence around your statement? i.e. "There is no evidence to indicate buybacks reduce long term incentives for executives compared to dividends."

Examining fantastical scenarios is a waste of time. No one has that button, there is a whole board of directors that votes on these things, and again, compensation is staggered over various performance targets staggered over a number of years. The proxy reports detailing these are easily accessible with an online search.

> Can you share some evidence around your statement? i.e. "There is no evidence to indicate buybacks reduce long term incentives for executives compared to dividends."

Reality. The businesses that have the best long term performance over the previous decades are the ones that have done the most buybacks, hence buybacks do not cause short term-ism. It’s just as easy as a business cutting expenses now to juice dividends in the near term, we’ve seen it time and time again with businesses that sacrifice quality and innovation in the short term which eventually cede ground to new businesses.

So no source(s) then?

Your statement is just as un-evidenced as mine, so I'm uncertain why you seem to be so sure of your statement.

> Examining fantastical scenarios is a waste of time. No one has that button, there is a whole board of directors that votes on these things, and again, compensation is staggered over various performance targets staggered over a number of years. The proxy reports detailing these are easily accessible with an online search.

If I can reduce the number of shares, then I can increase EPS. Buybacks reduce the number of shares. The button clearly exists, and based on watching this happen it's clear that the button gets pressed pretty often.

This is mixing up cause and effect. If I have lots of free cash flow, then I can do buybacks which increases EPS. Lots of free cash flow is associated with better performance, which is perhaps why people believe this.

Stock buybacks are designed to let the shareholder see the same upside, but decide when to take the taxable event. Long term gains are also preferable to non-qualified dividends.

If you're an entrepreneur or VC, you want big tech broken up because they can put serious price pressure on your exit.

Trillion dollar companies can easily spin up a team to copy you, with no incentive to stay alive. They can threaten you with all kinds of leverage - access to customers, patents, legislators. They can give you an ultimatum to sell for cheap, go to your competitor, etc.

Their scale and reach is additional unexpected gravity on your delta V.

Capitalism is supposed to be hard. It isn't supposed to support invasive species that can graze anywhere they please and kill ecosystems of diversity and innovation. These mega conglomerates can just throw themselves into markets using unrelated business unit profit and suffocate real companies.

Breaking up Google and Amazon would be good for everyone, perhaps even shareholders and ICs at those companies themselves if value is unlocked. Let alone all of the other companies and entrepreneurs in the market.

I do hope we have more genuine competitors fighting out there for breakupps. But it's hard to say these days.

Good, because this is an extremely toxic and damaging version of capitalism

Every company should be seeking to stand on its own, not become assimilated by the borg

This is pretend boogie man. Banning buybacks will not automatically make that money flow into hiring or salaries. Companies are not charities, they exist to make a return. If hiring people and/or paying more will generate a larger return than giving the money back to shareholders either through buybacks or dividends, then companies will do that.

AI is now giving companies something to do with excess cash that could generate better returns (shareholders believe so) and buybacks are being pushed out as money goes elsewhere[1].

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/move-over-stock-buybacks-ai-1...

Nope, but that's what trends show us from the decades between its ban and bans being lifted. All I know is that companies flowing money back into itself and having executives shift in and out every few years clearly hasn't worked.

It's just one stepping stone to make sure companies have skin in the game again.

You can argue dividends but that means the money gets taxed quicker, so that also helps the people.

>AI is now giving companies something to do with excess cash that could generate better returns

Sure, for now. I think that problem will fix itself sooner than later, so I'm not too concerned about that. Trends come and go.

That would mean there's no incentive for companies to buy back stock instead of dividends.

What makes you think people in Asia wouldn’t benefit from more competition in the market as well?

That said - I feel that advertisement based markets will always consolidate. There is too much of a benefit to having a single network which has the largest reach in terms of audience to show ads. This will always create incentives to consolidate over time.

Then again, why make the perfect the enemy of the good. Getting to more competition is a good step.

We've just hired a couple of graduates, with the expectation that they are going to take some time to grow.

What I'm seeing right now is a huge influx of candidates from large companies that have zero skill. I'm not exaggerating, they can't code anything. And it's not just AI, they started working before ChatGPT came out.

Others in the industry are seeing the same and it's quite likely that your resume is getting lost.

One practical advice for resume writers from me. PLEASE, just don't put stuff like "Improved the API responsiveness by 23.123897%". Unless it's a crazy number like 100x.

This has been true in software for decades. From the very first time I was senior enough in my career to start conducting interviews on the "employer" side of the table, we've seen a huge number of candidates who literally (in the literal meaning of literally) could not code. Like you would ask them to write a for loop, and they froze up and couldn't do it, or just started talking, hoping we would move onto more "behavioral" questions. This has been pretty much a constant in the software industry for as long as I've been in it.

I wouldn't be so sure about that, unless you mean $500K TC in 2019 dollars.

ZIRP might just come back, but it'll come with a higher price tag than the one from 2008.

If someone is trying to sell themselves as an undifferentiated developer in 2025 or later, it’s going to be an uphill battle unless you can lean on your network.

At 51, if my only differentiator is I can code, I’ve done something horribly wrong in my life.

Anecdotally, I found software development adjacent roles quickly when I was looking both last year and the year before.

There's always a race to the bottom. I don't think it's a big leap to suggest that what's considered the "minimum viable product" has decreased over the years. It's also no secret that software is getting worse.

As to salaries, I think you forgot how things worked before. The reason companies like Google introduced free food and all the incentives was because increasing salaries was not a better way to attract better talent, since salaries were already high. So either now something has changed where better talent cares more about money or we're attracting talent that cares more about money. As in either the same people changed or we're attracting a different type of person. Personally, regardless of age, regardless of field, I've seen a strong correlation with the best people not caring as much about money. Once the salary is good then they care more about how interesting the work is or how they can reduce stress in their life. Money matters, but it has decreasing utility as it grows.

'Will we get more customers?' 'Will they be more likely to stay with us?' 'Are we screwing ourselves out of sales by offering to host a server for remote control on the PC connected to the tool, even though it's cool and we can implement it in a week?'

I'm more on the 'do it because it's cool' side and have had to be wrangled a couple times with such questions since what makes interesting work for myself often doesn't align with client needs or hurts sales, as stupid as it might be.

I agree with you completely. They can just keep giving me cost of living raises and respect my experience and opinions (not saying they always have to go along with them) and I will be the last person here if they shut the lights off.

I work in a consulting company where I lead projects and I have an almost obsessive commitment to seeing the customer happy within the constraints of our contract that I wouldn’t even think I was capable of earlier in my career.

I pay close to attention to my employer’s goals and strategies and stay aligned. I lurk in our sales Slack channel and care very much about how I can add revenue even though I know it wont make but a little difference in my comp.

FWIW: the other two companies I cared about deeply were startups where my opinion was respected and they gave me more autonomy than I could have ever expected. The first I was leading a project for their largest customer and the second a decade later I was just kind of thrown the reigns of our cloud architecture strategy even though I had no experience at the time.

I had to think about this. The three companies I’ve actually cared about were those that I had already “won” the organizational rat race within my definition of winning. The first I was leading their largest project only because near the end, they had laid everyone else off. “Winning” was staying employed until the market picked back up after 2009. The company went out of business late 2011. I stayed until the bitter end and then did a contract with the customer that I had been working with.

The second I was already the de facto cloud architect and I “threatened” my CTO that I would quit if they ever made me a team lead. I only got that because I volunteered for the initiatives and I stuck to it until I figured out what I was doing and did a lot of research. The company only had 60 people at its height including project managers, managers, QA, analysts, sales and developers.

The current company, I’m already at the top IC level and have the highest bill rate as a US based consultant. I was bought in at that level. I’ve repeatedly asked my manager what my goals should be a s he said basically - keep making the customers happy and bringing in money through being billable.

The others I was a cog in the wheel and would have had to play the politics game to get ahead. I’ve always sucked at that.

In 2016, I saw the writing on the wall and knew I had to do something when my (step)son graduated in 2020 and my wife was willing to move anywhere the money took us.

It just so happened that a job fell into my lap at AWS working (full time) in the consulting department. I am no longer there. I now work at a third party consulting firm as a staff consultant specializing in app dev.

Someone joining now on the other hand, might have to resort to physical work at some point in the next ten years of things go south.

Most developers in the US don’t work for tech companies and will never make ovdd $200K inflation adjusted. Developer salary is very much bimodal

https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/trimodal

If you are working for boring old enterprise companies like banks, airlines, insurance companies or even most YC funded companies, “senior” developers will top out at around $160K-$170K inflation adjusted in tier 2 cities.

I spent my pure developer career [1] in Atlanta GA. Well known companies based there like Home Depot, Delta, Coke, and GE Transportation are paying their top developers around what entry level developers getting in BigTech.

But choose your non west coast city and you will see the same.

(say: AMD, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Facebook)

The answer is about 10M, which is not that far from what I estimated, even without including Nvidia. Now add in house price appreciation.

There are plenty of people who have managed to do this, from fairly normal tech jobs.

Just magically turn 10x 100k into 10M!

That’s only twice the minimum wage and even in Atlanta they are offering cashiers at McDonalds more than that.

Also, now, I am fully working from home so that helps with saving on gas and not eating out as much. I make my coffee every morning instead of Starbucks on the way to work and I make my own lunch and dinner 95% of the time.

What is the average rent where you live for a one bedroom? What is the tech hiring seen like?

Do you have kids?

You could have looked up the numbers for indices yourself, but here you go -

S&P500 -> ~4 million

NDXT (top 100 tech) -> ~14 million.

> just save 100k out of your 170k comp

Yes, that was my starting salary, and that's almost exactly what I saved.

This calculation assumes your salary is somewhat constant and maxed out as the person I was responding to claimed, but in my experience you can expect your tech salary to double every ~5-6 years.

NDXT went from ~2300 in 2015 to ~12500 in 2025. That's ~5.5x return. So even if you had your whole 1M saving in 2015, you'd only have 5.5M now. No idea how you get nearly 3x that?

And it's way worse if you take the actual scenario which is 100k added every year instead of starting with the 1M.

S&P500 is worse yet, at about 3.5x total return if you had the whole million at the start.

Realistically fooker's investment strategy into NDXT of 100k over 10 years would have produced around $2.5M depending on exact timing in the year and partitioning of that 100k. Way less than $15M nonsense. Also would have required extreme conviction alike the crypto types and completely counter how typically multi-million portfolios are managed (diversified).

Also, who needs 15M, at 5M net wealth there honestly is no reason to be working at a $200k/year job. You'll make way more after-tax income even assuming lousy 5% yearly return thru capital gains. Same story for 2.5M @ 10%.

If I had $5 million of investments outside of my home, would I work? Maybe? My job is far from stressful, I work from home, I “retired” my wife over 5 years ago when she was 44 eight years into our marriage so she could pursue her passions and we could travel a lot.

All of my friends still work so what could I possibly do with my free time that I don’t do now? The only restrictions that not working would lift is that we could more easily spend an extended amount of time outside of US time zones.

Yes though the propose is not to retire. There's better things to do with your life (IMO) than work a standard 9-5 job for some corporation once you've accumulated sufficient wealth to have financial independence.

> Even 5% is not conservative enough while you are in the withdrawal phase.

Assuming you spend 5% per year. 5M@5% is 250k, 200k+ after tax for CG + eligible divs. That's a lot of money to spend every year, more than most families get to earn thru their labor yearly. Can be secured against downturns with higher 4%+ bond allocations too. 5M is financial independence for vast majority of households. 2.5M can be as well for many if their baseline spend remains at 100k.

> All of my friends still work so what could I possibly do with my free time that I don’t do now?

Financial independence provides vast opportunities for those with ideas but lacking time. There's a reason most businesses are pursued by those who have financial wealth on their side.

I obviously decided to stay in consulting and work full time for a third party consulting company.

And again, expecting your salary to double every six or seven years is not realistic for most developers.

Most developers making around $120K in 2013, aren’t making $480K now.

Yeah, but there also isn’t enough wealth in the system for everyone to do this.

Like suppose that a) we’re now at a reasonably correct valuation for Nvidia b) assume a hypothetical where everyone in the US had plowed all of their savings into Nvidia in 2015. Result: The market cap of Nvidia is still $6 trillion, and the median American owns less than $10k in Nvidia stock.

About a 1:1000 ratio I'd guess.

Yes, "Everyone with a good tech job" has a significantly higher chance of keeping or holding tech RSUs, and have conviction that investing in tech is going to pay off.

> but literally cannot work for everyone at the same time

Yes, that is how the world works. Anything that makes you successful would not work for everyone at the same time.

To me this reads as a particularly misanthropic view of the world that only considers zero-sum (or less than zero sum) actions.

Any investments in yourself that aren’t at the expense of others (education, exercise, diet, therapy, living space improvements, etc., etc.) or investments in family and community, benefit both you and others and would work for everybody; indeed, many such investments would work better the more people undertook them, rather than the fewer.

> more

and

> everyone

?

If more people bought Nvidia stocks, the value would be higher. If everyone bought, something would give (and that is exactly what we are starting to see).

Some of the comments on this thread highlight just how disconnected many people were/are from everything outside of the FAANG bubble.

> Ok, are you assuming their spouse is also in tech and making at least similar?

Yes, suppose spouse contributes to household expenses, but assume separate savings and investments for this calculation. Do you see you'd easily get to 100k saved?

The difference between having a large fraction of your savings in your bank account versus invested for the last 10 years can be quite a few millions, which is what most commenters here are failing to see. I'm sure the story was different between 2002 and 2012, but that was not what I talking about.

I managed to save about 100k per year in Denver and Salt Lake City with mid tier tech and govt lab jobs. I'm suspicious of the claim that Atlanta is significantly different. From what I have seen, it's usually bad financial decisions.

And for context, saving about double that during and post COVID by obtaining a remote job where the employer does not discriminate by location too much other than for maybe career growth.

And while I work remotely, remote jobs are getting more scarce and more competitive. Every job gets hundreds of applications within the curse few hours.

I assure you that my hometown in South GA (a cheap city) didn’t have $170K a year developer jobs.

A friend who moved to Columbus GA after college in 1997 I doubt is making $170K now.

I know my friend who still lives in Atlanta and is a lead developer at Home Depot (one of the few F500 companies based in Atlanta) just crossed around $170K and he has been there 10 years.

https://www.paycheckcity.com/calculator/salary/georgia/resul...

So to invest $100K a year let’s say some pretax and some post tax, they would have to live off of $1700 a month. They are not going to be buying a house with that.

As far as wealth through equity in a house, that’s not liquid. What are you going to do borrow against it?

And actually I can speak for one of the best case scenarios for buying a house. I had a house built in 2016 in the most affluent county in GA for $335K - a 5 bedroom, 3.5 bath - and sold it in 2024 for $670K and moved to state taxe free Florida and bought a condo in 2022 for half the cost (we kept both for awhile)

Even then, we could only do that because my (step)kids were both grown and I pivoted to customer facing cloud consulting in 2020. A niche that hasn’t suffered from the return to office mandates - ironically enough except for AWS ProServe (former employee) and Google’s equivalent internal department (who has been trying to recruit me for years).

Most people won’t and shouldn’t be picking individual stocks. Of course it’s easy to be a genuis saying what would have happened if you picked stocks that went up.

You’re not realistically saving $50K a year.

I think software is going through what scribes went through when education went universal.

At one point, just knowing how to read and write gave you a cushy job. It didn't matter what, maybe you were in government, maybe you were a clerk organizing trade.

Somewhere in the last 20 years, this happened with coding. At the start of the millennium, knowing how to code meant you could fill some role. Now, everybody knows enough of how to do it that it's assumed for many roles, just as reading and writing is for every office job.

I knew I had to get into BigTech or adjacent after my son graduated as a software engineer.

Around 2016 I belatedly discovered cloud consulting where consultants would come in and “transform” organizations. I learned in hindsight that they were a bunch of old school net ops folks who only knew how to do bad lift and shifts that costs the company more money and treated AWS like a Colo.

I wanted to do the same but focus on what I learned the term for years later was “modernization”. Bringing in a software developers mindset on cloud consulting. By 2020, I was no longer thinking about BigTech and was focused on getting into consulting. I had never heard of AWS’s Professional Services department until a recruiter told me about it. Even then I didn’t know it was full time working for AWS directly until that was also explained to me.

[1] yes in hindsight I know that a title of “senior” to someone who pulls well defined tickets off a Jira board is laughable.

Is it? I don't know anyone who can code proficiently outside of people who work tech jobs (or used to).

Even if you are targeting a major tech, if you are trying to differentiate yourself by how well you can reverse a btree on the white board, there are plenty of people who can do the same. It’s not a differentiator that you have previous experience in BigTech any more. So do thousands of others.

I looked at the statistics[1], and while you could argue new graduates have seen worse (recent grad unemployment is actually lower than much of the 2010s), you can also see that in contrast to previous periods where new grad unemployment is lower than all worker unemployment, this time around new grad unemployment is actually slightly higher. However if you look at the chart this wasn't a post pandemic phenomena. The gap has been closing since the back half of the 2010s, and doesn't show much of a spike after the release of chatgpt, so "AI" isn't a good explanation either.

[1] https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market

Of course you also need to look at underemployment too. Which CS is on the lower end of that. So you have to consider things like that even though there's a higher unemployment rate than performing arts (2x) there is far lower underemployment because people expect to get jobs in their field for CS.

There's more you need to look at too. It's not so easy and you shouldn't just use such a high level approximation if you want to make sense of the data.

Hiring lab has some more interesting information to like the number of postings. CS is way down from "prepandemic" levels, but unfortunately only goes to 2020 (hence the quotes).

https://data.indeed.com/#/

TL;DR Gen Z is "slightly better off" in pure financial status compared to older generations , even with inflation adjusted. But the distribution on what got cheaper overtime and what got more expensive is causing the true strain among Gen Z.

It also helps to explain a bit of a generation clash when you see how older generations can chastise the younger ones over what were "luxuriies" when they were that age. The entire market is flipped.

However, engineers in developing countries will work half your wage, remote from their home, where that's a great salary where they live. When the average annual salary in India is the equivalent of $4,200 USD/year, there are a lot of talented engineers there that if they don't win the H1B lottery, will end up working for big tech remote.

Given cost of living, I have a hard time believing young people come out being cheaper. I live in an area with cheap rents and my mortgage is still less than the average price of a one-bedroom apartment in the area. My cars are new and paid off, and I have pretty much all of the stuff I'd ever need in my life. Plus, no student loans.

That might be one of the real root causes of the job market for new grads being shit. The amount of money people need to meet their basic needs has skyrocketed, and young people bear the brunt of the burden. The only people who can readily afford to work too cheap are those with parents who can continue to support them to a degree.