The Broken Senior-Only Developer Market

If you feel like it's really hard to get a software engineering job right now, you're not alone. The current tech market is biased towards senior engineers, so if you only have 1-2 years of experience, you're straight out of luck. Let's talk about how we got here, why the current market is like this, and most importantly what we're going to do about it.


Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction
0:35 - The senior only market
1:15 - Who am I
1:36 - Upcoming series
2:05 - Why is this happening
6:18 - What are we going to do about it
8:53 - Takeaways
9:08 - Brilliant shoutout (ad)

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My Equipment:

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Sub count: 220,905

#tech #softwareengineer #coding #layoffs #programming

[Novascrub]

As a Tech Lead, I can tell you to never ever act like you know more than you do. Quite the opposite. Where I've been successful it's because I'm not afraid to have people think I'm dumb and completely uninformed about everything.

[fueradelmeta]

This remembers me the "5 years of experience required" for a 2 years old platform.

[kellyhoesing]

The thing that worked okay for my fellow bootcampers was to reach out to medium-sized, older local/regional businesses. They often have a legacy system that they have to train new hires on regardless of the applicants background. It's not sexy and the pay isn't amazing, but it gets coding employment on your resume.

[JadaEbong]

I've replaced the phrase "fake it until you make it" to "do it until you are it" as it gives me less imposter syndrome

[jeffinjoseph]

All these companies hiring only senior developers not realizing that after a while they will face a massive problem which is that no one was hiring junior developers and it is those developers who eventually become the senior developers that they want. If no one wants junior devs, in 10-15 years the no. of senior devs is going to plummet, because the people who would have been seniors by then were not able to get the jobs that would have given them that level of experience.

[caseydriscoll]

Fake it until you make it is somewhat good advice, because a typical person is probably underselling their skills. However, a senior does the opposite. A senior loudly and confidently proclaims when they don’t know something and can lead a discussion to figure it out.

[Aidan_Au]

I look forward to this series. And we're all rooting for you that you'll get many offers!

[Sarwaan]

I’m trying to hire principal engineers and I noticed a lot of the “fake it till you make it” crowd just wastes everyone’s time.

[t.j.]

The reason is simple. Companies are GREEDY and don’t want to invest in their employees and train them. They’d rather get instant gratification with people with 5-years experience already.

[nickelbutt]

Tbh, i dont like these solutions because this is just more grindset BS. This is the fault of an industry that has become so incredibly greedy, they no longer want to invest in employees.

And if thats the case, why would I bend over backwards to impress people like this?

[ahmetyilmaz]

Just graduated in 2022 and STILL hunting for my first job as a .NET Developer. What's frustrating is seeing entry-level positions asking for experience... like seriously, come on now. 😤

[shuks]

keep studying, keep practicing, keep your resume and portfolio up to date, apply

it is HARD, but it is possible to find a new job

[traezeeofor]

@ 9:05: "The market is tough, yes. But it's not if you'll get a job, but when?".
I love that man!

[sheratzy]

"No one knows what they're doing" - this statement sums up why companies are hiring less junior engineers.

Many senior engineers do in fact know what is going on. The best senior engineers I've met can often isolate and debug problems without having to look at the code. They can determine the source just by you describing the issue

[Squary]

I know the pain. I graduated recently and while visiting my university in Germany I gained a little over 2 years of work coding experience. I also worked as a freelancer for half a year, participated in plenty of hackathons getting prices and I still struggle to get a junior level position.

Now I stopped rolling out applications with the old mindset of developers being highly desirable and allowing me to demand +50k a year. I poured in a lot more effort into my CV than I had to in the past, ask for 20% less salary or even lower for a more appealing position and hope that I can get over the hurdle to accumulate even more work experience while I work night shifts at Burger King for minimum wage.
It's very exhausting to work full-time physical labor while trying to manage life and improving your skill set by building things of your own because close to every entry level job has crazy high requirements.

[MisterMutt]

This video reminded me that life is about optimizing for share-holder value!

[pretty_okay]

"They act like they know what they are doing, even if they don't" is the most junior mindset you can possibly have. Mark of a true senior is that they know their shit, but they also know their limitations and are not scared to ask/collaborate with people in areas where they have defficiencies. What makes someone a senior is not that they know everything, but that they know HOW to ask someone who does have relevant knowledge the right questions, so they can get whats going on. In the end what you should be striving to do, is to create the best possible technical solution. If you have the knowledge to do so: great, you can do it. If not, you need to be able to talk to people either to have them chip in or at least get you to a point where you can take over. Thats exactly what makes seniors so valuable: They are ressourcfull enough to get to where they need to go, even if they dont have the necessary knowledge when they are given the task.

[darkwoodmovies]

Personally, I've seen something a bit more sinister happening. While yes, Senior and Staff engineers are still in very high demand, many companies lowered the requirements by a few years (e.g. you can now get many Senior positions after 3-5 years, rather than 5-10 years as it was before). BUT, the pay was bumped down about 1 level lower. So now, you'll be hired to do Senior work with Senior-level expectations, even after 3-5 years, but you'll still be paid as a mid-level engineer.

[apl]

I'm an American who has lived in the East for 20+ years. The market for developers in countries like India and Vietnam are stronger than ever. I have a friend in Vietnam who has a software engineering firm. He says it's difficult to even get junior devs. American firms are outsourcing more while assigning the jobs needing real finesse to the highly skilled American developers. We've seen this short-sighted max-profit-now mindset in other industries. It is this mindset which has decimated American manufacturing. Look at semiconductors, for example. What as once in the US wheelhouse has now been gone so long that the US can't revamp domestic industry because it simply doesn't have the expertise, let alone the infrastructure. Look forward 10 years. Polish, Vietnamese, and Indian firms will have been investing in juniors, and happily picking up all the junior work that US firms farmed out. Tech dominance will shift to the developing world and the US will be even less competitive than it is now.

[mazenyasser]

I'm in my first job, basically doing freelance projects but for a senior developer and under his supervision.
I've demonstrated enough resilience and passion that he wanted me to continue working for him.
But I don't know what I'll do next, I'm 6 months in with the first 3 months being like an internship but the last 3 as an actual job.