Yep, and watching many of my peers in tech get red pilled and vote for this administration, or even be active participants in it, has been very hard to stomach. Financial penalties might be the only thing that gets them to realize the error of their ways
We all know that the next guy is likely going to be much worse, and if it's not the next guy it will be the one afterwards. This shithole of country has a brutally bad track record of dealing with their own problems in a reasonable fashion
I think it's also a uniquely American thing. We are so defined by our work and our careers here. It's kind of sad, in my opinion, but that's the reality.
Yea I've noticed this is the singular difference between those that enjoy early retirement and are successful doing it and those that aren't. Many ambitious people end up wrapping their entire identity up with work and feel completely lost with that gone. It's why so many successful founders throw themselves into new startups right after an exit, despite having way more than enough to retire. Personally, I've taken some time off since selling my startup and I've been so busy learning new things and building new hobbies that I can't imagine going back! Maybe I will one day, but it will likely involve something I've learned from during this time
And all these data centers they want to build around the country. When consumers can’t get devices they want maybe they’ll fight even harder against these data centers being built in their back yard. He’s not making any fans with this move that’s for sure
> Epson stopped making their flatbeds that do film, reportedly because they can’t get the CCDs anymore. That may be a rumor.
Wow, you weren’t kidding, I completely missed this. I bought one, sold it, then bought and currently own another. I better baby it, there’s really nothing like it out there.
This is cool. I spent ~$1k on a Pakon F135+ a number of years ago, and the workflow was indeed extremely frustrating and the results not that great. If I were still shooting a lot of film I’d definitely pick this up. But we need to see sample images!
I really feel horrible for people who bet on CS and are hitting this job market right now. It's interesting, back when I was in elementary school in the 90's, parents of friends knew I had an interest in computers and would tell me becoming a programmer or IT person was a terrible job and I should avoid it. That was maybe true until it wasn't, and it ended up being highly lucrative. I can't tell if this is the same thing all over again or something completely different. What I think will be fascinating to watch is how the market for talented engineers changes as the bottom drops out and the pipeline of new grads dries up, or maybe it will balance out again? Or will these companies reap what they sow as they stop hiring and then cannot hire again because no one is entering the field anymore?
AI may actually change everything but I suspect things are cyclical to at least some degree. The $400K jobs may dry up for most--and certainly having two or more those jobs at the same time will--especially for people without degrees or degrees from no-name colleges or boot camps. It may be reasonable to expect CS/programming jobs will become more like lots of other STEM degrees in terms of requirements and comp.
Which is certainly a lot different than the expectations that were set since post dot-com.
Obviously (? I think) there will be jobs but they may well be more in line with middle-class professional jobs than some cadre has been in the last 10-20 years.
You can look out to other economies to see how software plays out in a "normal" market, not a VC and mega-corp backed one. Salaries in those economies for software are like you are predicting, in line with other skilled professions.
It was the same for me growing up in the shadow of Silicon Valley in the early aughts, post dot com crash. Even when I went to college in 2008 the conventional wisdom was that there weren’t going to be any jobs in software, it was all being outsourced. I studied CS anyways, because I loved it. It was still very hard to get my first job out of college in 2012.
But then from like 2015-2022 things got crazy. Anyone with a CS degree, or even a boot camp certificate, could immediately get a 200k/year job with little effort. And people started to think this was normal, would last forever. But in fact this was a crazy situation, it absolutely could not last.
I feel for the young people who thought (or were told) that CS degrees were an automatic ticket into the upper middle class. But in reality, there’s no such thing.
> I feel for the young people who thought (or were told) that CS degrees were an automatic ticket into the upper middle class. But in reality, there’s no such thing.
It's not just about money. Besides, the gold rush that you describe was only this big in the US, for a certain subset of workers, and only during a limited time (I feel like splitting up the 2015-2022 period into pre- and post-pandemic is more than warranted on its own). I went into CS not with an expectation of endless riches, but because I really like computers. My goal isn't $200k/year, it's employment. I would more than gladly take a lower-end job doing digital pencil-pushing, or IT, or tech support, or really anything that lists a CS degree as an acceptable education for the job. But it's not just that the money had dried up - the jobs aren't lower-paid, they're not less attractive, they just don't exist anymore. I can't imagine what the job search was like for you in 2012, but whatever financial pessimism might've existed at that time seems like a wholly different beast to what we have today.
2012 was also on the tail end of the Great Recession. I actually somewhat reluctantly hung on where I was for an extra year or two because I didn’t want to play my connections cards in a tough market. As it turned out it basically took one email but I didn’t know that would be the case.
Back before the Dotcom Boom, unless you were in Silicon Valley, most jobs were "Programmer/Analyst" and you worked for low wages for a big company. This is what I did and it took me many years before I could get my foot in the door in Silicon Valley but once I did, I never looked back.
From what I've seen, CS/programming job growth is significantly worse than in other comparable fields. Though my guess is that's a retrenchment from overhiring and overpaying.
The data I've seen on under& unemployment for recent grads from the federal reserve bank puts comp sci kinda middle of the pack of other science & engineering majors.
I would expect CS doing better than EE or Physics or Chemistry or ME ...
In some science fields good luck getting a job if you don't have a Ph.D.
But otherwise, yes, these things are cyclical. But I think the trend, even with AI, is still towards more software. We've had explosive growth over the last few decades.
>> company in America is struggling to hire technicians, and the problem - (in spite of what you'll likely read in the comments,) has nothing to do with the pay, the benefits, or the working conditions.
When CEO says it has nothing to do with the pay - it is exactly the reason why there are shortages of the talent.
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