Thousands of Software Engineers Say the Job Market Is Getting Much Worse::9,388 engineers polled by Motherboard and Blind said AI will lead to less hiring. Only 6% were confident they’d get another job with the same pay.
The 2017 tax bill that the Republicans rammed through had a time bomb in it for software developers. Starting in 2022, companies could no longer expense R&D costs, and instead had to amortize them over 5 years. This has led to massive tax bills in 2023 for companies. I have no doubt that this is another major factor in the recent tech layoffs.
Take an imaginary bootstrapped software business called “Acme Corp.” This company generates $1,000,000 of revenue per year running a SaaS service. It employs five engineers, and pays each $200,000. That is $1,000,000 paid in labor costs. For simplicity, we omit other costs like servers and hosting, even though those costs can also fall under the new R&D rules, and have to be amortized. So, how much taxable profit does this company make?
In 2021, the answer would be zero profit. In 2022, the answer was $900,000 in profits(!!)
https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-will-us-companies-hire
That doesn’t make sense because salaries are a current expense, not a capital expense to be amortized. And why 5 years? The work a software engineer does may be outdated in a year or two. Only certain legacy applications are around for 5 years.
The amortization time period is supposed to match the usefulness of the item purchased. Basically, software engineers are an ongoing expense, not R&D.
Only certain legacy applications are around for 5 years.
Oh if that were true.
Real laughing-crying emoji hours.
I’ve got a friend who got his job entirely because he’s under 40 and knows Fortran.
What about the regular engineers? I hardly ever hear about those guys and AI.
Traditional engineering areas can’t be as easily automated. Certain aspects certainly can, but prototyping usually involves physical presence, as well as installation or testing.
I would say the general job market is getting worse 🤔
Unemployment has been under 4% for a record time. The boomers are all leaving faster than zoomers can get hired. Tech outsourcing is increasingly seen as a path to managerial failure, as these cheapo firms fail to produce real value and talented professionals run circles around their shitty products. And we’re experiencing something of an industrial renaissance in the US, thanks to the battery boom.
The job market is as good as its been since at least the Bush Era and the Jobless Recovery. It just sucks because working conditions generally speaking have deteriorated so heavily from the 70s-era nadar.
This article isn’t really saying anything. It’s just saying that a lot of people feel like the job market has gotten tougher, but we don’t have any solid evidence to prove that.
Personally, I recently got a new software development job, and it was offered to me from the very first company I interviewed for. (This is out of the ordinary for me, as during past job searches it took me several interviews before I got an offer.) Did I get a job quickly this time because the job market is better, because I’ve become a better candidate, or because I got lucky? It’s impossible to say. Anecdotal evidence doesn’t really mean anything when it comes to market competitiveness IMO.
I also just got a new job jan 1st. Submitted applications for a few positions, got an interview with 1 and an offer. 40% salary increase. Meanwhile my company was talking about how they couldn’t offer any raises because the job market was so bad right now lmao.
Negotiated myself a 15% raise last year by getting a competitive job offer from a neighboring firm.
Admittedly, I’m not a Stanford brat getting fuck-you high six figures from Palantir for doing fancy powerpoints at the DoD. Maybe that’s the jobs that are going away.
