[Solvitieg]

> Overall, I'd say relax a bit. You're still in a good situation. Recessions are hard for many, but software engineers were among the best off during the last one and I expect will be this time also.

The demand for software engineers was driven partly by zombie app and saas companies all competing for "top talent", dependent entirely on free cash but without sustainable business models.

On top of that, the "demand" narrative led to an influx of new software engineers that will mature over the next 1-3 years.

These two factors I believe put our industry at risk if there's a recession.

[eastbound]

At risk? We’ll just stop having overinflated salaries. The current situation is insane for employers:

- Employees are not willing to put a little extra (paid extra, I mean - and we’re at the 35hrs week here),

- Not willing to study afterwork to improve their career,

- Not willing to work on legacy products where we pay them 40% more.

- In the first 2 years, I can pay someone 35 -> 50 -> +10k bonus, and they’ll leave for a job at 65 going 75 with a tech stack that ticks all boxes.

- You can teach them React + SpringBoot + Kubernetes, and they’ll still leave because company XYZ does AWS + Neo4j + AI… while still not fixing spelling mistakes in the UI and still in the habit of downloading and entire DB tables and filter them in the Java side, and seeing no problem asking for a microservices architecture.

This developer market is batshit crazy and isn’t tight enough to make people want to serve the needs of customers. “Do something hard and get a house in exchange” isn’t a persuasive argument today, they’ll get rich anyway. Instead, they serve their resume, which I perfectly respect and understand, it needs to be done too, but at one point, it’s a disconnect between customers, employers and developers.

A crisis is unfortunate but I can’t wait for it.

[ChuckNorris89]

Where are you located that you have a 35h week while enjoying such great benefits like employer investing in your training?

I'd like to move there.

In my EU country the working hours are 38.5 which isn't as good as 35h, but it isn't that bad, but no employer hires you to invest in your training. Every company wants only seniors, preferably for junior wages, and scream there's a shortage while offering no WFH because "management doesn't believe in WFH" and "the culture of working in the office is better".

[gambiting]

I'm in UK, working at a video games studio and while we work 37.5h a week indeed all training is done during work hours, we hire people from junior and bring them up to senior/expert levels, with our average seniority being something stupid like 12 years+(longest one atm is 29 years). And yes, we only have to be in the office 1 day a week, personally I work 4 days from home 1 from the office, but it's up to everyone how they want to do it.

[chopsuey5540]

Probably France

[arpafaucon]

that does look like french salary ranges for juniors

[avn2109]

I am also interested in the geography here, especially wrt to the currency/units in "35 -> 50 -> +10k"

Are those numbers maybe denominated in Kuwaiti or Bahraini dinars? Or in some country-specific unspoken convenience unit such as tens-of-thousands of Japanese yen, or hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese Dong, or something like that?

[lodovic]

I think your reply sort of proves his point, if 38.5 -> 35 hour workweek is enough to move, well, employers are not getting the best deal.

[ornornor]

> - Employees are not willing to put a little extra (and we’re at the 35hrs week here),

> - Not willing to study afterwork to improve their career,

Some of your points make sense but these two…

[hbbio]

Indeed, they should study at work.

[ornornor]

Heresy!

[aloisdg]

Home time is personal time. Here I deal with family, chores and self-connection. If you want me to learn stuff and be better and my job you will have to give me time, company time, for that. We are not machine.

In France it is mandatory for the company to give time for training. Thanks unions.

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/id/LEGISCTA000006189881...

[rad_gruchalski]

> We are not machine.

Counterpoint: if you want to stay relevant in technology and be above regular level, you gotta have the passion for it and that implies doing your homework.

Look at it from another perspective. If you want to play a guitar in a band for money, you don’t require the band to give you “time to learn”. You learn on your own time.

If you don’t want to learn, you become irrelevant and get replaced.

[zmxz]

Then you also don't have any problem if better candidate appears and challenges your position, right?

[ornornor]

Indeed, I was being sarcastic.

[ekianjo]

thanks unions for the millions of unemployed people too

[zmxz]

What's wrong with those two? I'm genuinely interested, software engineers are overpaid as is with benefits that nearly every other industry can only dream about and you're upset about not being able to put extra 5 hours of time a week to improve your skills related to something that's your career?

And we wonder why quality of everything is awful and why people are unreliable and entitled.

[ornornor]

> software engineers are overpaid as is with benefits that nearly every other industry can only dream about

Then why do companies keep on paying these salaries? Besides, that doesn’t really apply outside of unicorns and SV. I’ve been doing this for a while and have never had catered lunches or dry cleaning etc provided by my employers.

Also, what are you comparing to? Professional athletes or traders are overpaid compared to SE. if you compare to burger flippers then it doesn’t make sense either.

Accountants are paid quite well for instance. Their employers pay for their time and expenses when they go to a seminar and keep their skills up to date. Why should it be any different for SE?

[rtpg]

It's easy: if you want your employee to do something, all you have to do is pay them for their time.

Not willing to? Then I guess it's not important to you.

[zmxz]

It takes two to tango. If you want to get paid, become someone who's useful.

This attitude where employees sit like bags of potatoes waiting for knowledge to permeate their brains via osmosis is awful.

[meheleventyone]

You’re missing the point. It’s that companies shouldn’t expect employees to improve themselves for the companies benefit on their own time. Not that employees shouldn’t improve themselves for their own benefit on their own time if they want to. Ergo if companies expect employees to work specifically to get better at their jobs they should provide resources and training in work time as its part of the job itself.

[newswasboring]

> This attitude where employees sit like bags of potatoes waiting for knowledge to permeate their brains via osmosis is awful.

I think you misunderstand. A person who is getting paid is already useful. That is why they were hired. By studying you want them to be more useful and that is an extra demand over their contract.

[dunefox]

You're paying your employee because they are suitable at this moment. Expecting someone to study in their free time is nonsense. If you want that you either need to pay for it or allow study time during the work time.

[zmxz]

I want to provide service to clients that we're paid for. I want staff to actually know what they claim they know. I want to deliver so we can all get paid and go home and do whatever else interests us.

That's what I want.

But I'm the proxy between staff, clients and government. So when I stay up late every night in order to reconcile all the warring parties, the comment I get is "pay more if you want to get more".

Or I could not deal with entitled underskilled staff, right? That's also a viable option? Why beg people to sharpen their craft if they don't want to? I might be old fashioned and I might take pride in what I do because I want to do it to the best of my abilities. I might have wrongly assumed that the rest of fellow programmers are similar to that, but it seems not.

[cudgy]

I doubt highly skilled modern workers would want to work for someone with the attitude expressed. Those people have options and working for a company that has a one-sided old-fashioned attitude that refuses to train them for the companies chosen development stack would be foolish.

[corobo]

Are you involved in the hiring process? It sounds like you're hiring juniors when you want intermediate/seniors

Juniors are cheaper but you have to factor in training costs if you want them trained lol

[Sohcahtoa82]

This reads as "My work-life balance sucks, but rather than fight for improvement, I'm going to complain about how others have it so good."

You sound like you live to work rather than work to live. It's a sad way to live your life. Years from now, you'll be on your death bed wishing you allowed yourself to relax a bit and have more fun.

[cinntaile]

It sounds like you're not getting paid enough for the late hours you work.

[micromacrofoot]

You can probably find a job where you’re not staying up late every night. What are you doing that’s worth sacrificing your health for?

[akoncius]

exactly, you are paying for current skills. If employer is fine with current skills, and employee wants a better salary, which would require new skills, who should make effort?

[pacifika]

Overpaid? https://www.harveynash.co.uk/jobs

[fennecfoxy]

>software engineers are overpaid as is with benefits that nearly every other industry can only dream about

Maybe in some parts of America. Even highly paid developers generally do work that not many people outside of the industry can't do (though I encourage everyone I know to try programming).

In my mind software developers and other tech workers are one of the driving forces of human development, though not quite so much as those working on the forefront of technology (ie proper engineering/research and development). The industry I hold in the highest regard is the medical industry; doctors are just amazing and I appreciate what they do and their importance (fair warning that this is a non-American/public healthcare perspective).

[nivenkos]

The salaries are only high in the US though, but the recession is global.

[kortilla]

> the first 2 years, I can pay someone 35 -> 50 -> +10k bonus

You pay them such terrible wages and you’re surprised they leave? You can make $35k at in-n-out shilling beef on a bun.

[ChuckNorris89]

Maybe they're in an European country where that would be a good wage.

[aixi]

In most EU countries that is not a good wage

[ChuckNorris89]

It may not be, but it's pretty standard what juniors usually make in lots of parts in Europe if you exclude fang, big tech and high rolling unicorns.

[kgwgk]

Depends on your definition of good. 50k+ is above average (almost?) everywhere and is more than twice the EU average.

[ChuckNorris89]

I think a lot of HN devs, even in Europe, live in a high earners bubble, especially if they have seniority at a good company in a hot market, and loose perspective of what the average wages really are.

[thebean11]

The median wage in the US is like $35k, but that does not mean $70k is a high dev salary..

[exdsq]

35k is above the average salary in most EU countries.

[benhurmarcel]

In France it's pretty good.

[zmxz]

What a terrible person, doesn't have access to infinite money and can't afford to overpay underskilled staff.

[rtpg]

Perhaps their business model is not good?

Acting like companies deserve underpaid labor (let's not even get into the combination of that with an expectation of fealty + coming to the office every day to avoid managers being lonely) gets us to situations where people out of college with shitty negotiation skills end up losing 5 years of their life in miserable situations.

Unless you are a business owner, having everyone be paid reasonably is a net win, but it's also the right thing to do, and shows a minimum of respect to people doing work.

[californical]

If you can’t pay competitively for competent people, then complain that nobody wants to work for you, I think the real problem is that your business is unviable since you can’t cover the costs to operate it

[eastbound]

Those are 20% above market rate in France, probably 40% above when you don’t have an engineer’s degree.

The blanket “YOU PAY THEM TOO LITTLE” and its brother “EVEN AT THE BEGINNING OF MY CAREER I NEVER STUDY AT HOME AND I JUST DO WHAT MY EMPLOYER TELLS ME ON A WRITTEN SHEET OF PAPER WITH DEFINITIVE SIGN OFF” mentality needs to go.

You choose:

- Want to work in a factory? €1200 net per month,

- Job that requires that you come with a skillset? €2400 pm.

- Job where you build an unknown product with lots of leeway, innovation, networking and entrepreneurship? 5400€ to 20k€ per month. 20k€ is President Macron’s salary, so it’s not so low.

I’ll give my 200k€ dividends to whoever accepts to perform the odd tasks like maintain the jQuery app AND clean the bathrooms AND notice when they need cleaning AND launch a new product when it needs launching AND close one down and find suitable ways out for customers.

“How do you expect them to work for you if you make them clean the toilets!” well that’s why I’m getting the bonus. To anyone willing to bend for the toilets when needed, there is a job available here.

[zmxz]

Don't read what's written the way it suits you in order to come out as a better person, also commenting on someone's business with literally 0 facts means only that you're posting from an image you created in which you're good and me - evil.

Competent people are worth every penny and then some. We're all talking about incompetent ones who throw a huge shadow over the competent ones.

I think you're aware of that but you still posted what you posted. Thank you for the compassion and understanding. Guilty before trial, that's the way we do it, right? :)

[CalRobert]

I agree competent people are worth every penny. Why are you not paying enough to get them?

The salaries you listed are half what they'd be in Ireland and something like a quarter - maybe less - of what they'd be in California.

[CalRobert]

Those wages are atrocious. Perhaps you do not have a viable business model.

Keep in mind that your competition is not just France. Plenty of people (myself included) took note of the terrible wages in Europe and decided that maybe those American companies with 6 figure remote jobs aren't so bad after all.

[exdsq]

Can confirm. Went from £55k to $165k by going remote in the US

[iLoveOncall]

Lol from this post I can tell you're an employer that nobody will ever want to work for no matter the salary you're paying. The economic situation and developers are not the issue, you are.

[rfrec0n]

My student loan payments will probably be around $1200 a month after I graduate and a studio apartment in my pretty small city is $900 without utilities. I could probably survive on a $35k salary but I'd have to switch to income based repayment on my loans which would suck because I'd like to eventually be able to buy a house

[MandieD]

That's one of the big differences: the only thing a normal person in France, Germany or the rest of western Europe* could do that involves a 1200/month repayment is buy property (or an absolutely ridiculous car). A lot of the younger employees I work with got paid while doing their bachelor's degrees because they did dual degree programs, where they're employed by a big industrial company and alternate terms having internships within the company and taking courses at the university the company partners with.

* I say "western Europe" because I know that university fees in the UK are higher, and this is the region I currently know enough to say this about, but I imagine university fees are similarly low in eastern and southern Europe.

[rowanajmarshall]

The only way you'd be paying back £1200 a month on student loans (plan 2) in the UK is if you were earning £180,180/year or more. And at that income, it's probably not the student loans giving you trouble.

[secondcoming]

> involves a 1200/month repayment is buy property

Rent?

[MandieD]

Rent’s definitely an expense, but isn’t a loan.

[PedroBatista]

Although some valid points and I understand the frustration, this has some major Uncle Tom vibes.

[scollet]

I would say salaries are massively under-inflated

[flakyfilibuster]

so ungrateful these devs...

[KronisLV]

> Employees are not willing to put a little extra (paid extra, I mean - and we’re at the 35hrs week here),

Currently working in a company that's short staffed but there's a seemingly endless amount of work.

Things might be so charitable in many companies out there for all I care, but that's definitely not the situation everywhere.

Then again, at least in my current company things are nowhere near as bad as 996, but please don't ignore such problems either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

One might also bring up the fact that people in "outsourcing" countries also don't have such nice WLB.

> Not willing to study afterwork to improve their career,

Most of the stuff i've learnt (Docker/OCI, Swarm/Kubernetes/Nomad, CI/CD concepts, monitoring, different architectures and new languages) all were in my free time, because the tech stacks at work were somewhat dated and would pigeonhole me into maintenance roles and similar enterprise messes.

Then again, one can and should make the point: doctors don't practice their craft over the weekends, why should software engineers? Do cashiers have to do unpaid work after hours? Do teachers? And if yes, is that okay? Shouldn't your work be compensated, instead of cutting into your free time?

> Not willing to work on legacy products where we pay them 40% more.

Currently the oldest project that I'm working on is like 8 years old and it's a mess. Recently tried modernizing it, would recommend that NOBODY ever try to do that, since I learnt almost no new skills at the expense of massive amounts of stress and struggling with problem after problem, just to keep this old monolith alive.

40% might seem nice at a glance, but what about the alternative costs of not learning new and relevant technologies and thus getting passed up for new work opportunities? What about suffering daily due to needing to waste your time with some dated mess, since most old code is unwieldy to work with at best and horrible at worst?

> In the first 2 years, I can pay someone 35 -> 50 -> +10k bonus, and they’ll leave for a job at 65 going 75 with a tech stack that ticks all boxes.

That is largely how the industry is and I doubt that I can blame people for wanting to maximize their own earning potential, especially in the current financial climate.

Of course, once again this doesn't really match up with my own circumstances, given that owning a home might take about 10 more years of saving money for me, given that I'm not as well paid as all these other developers.

> You can teach them React + SpringBoot + Kubernetes, and they’ll still leave because company XYZ does AWS + Neo4j + AI… while still not fixing spelling mistakes in the UI and still in the habit of downloading and entire DB tables and filter them in the Java side, and seeing no problem asking for a microservices architecture.

With this, I can mostly agree. If things like spelling don't matter to people, obviously they aren't going to pay attention to them.

But overall, I still find your points to be too focused on a particular environment. Developers everywhere doesn't have it quite as good to begin with, no matter how much of an echo chamber HN can sometimes be.

Then again, last i checked, a Google employee would bring in around ~20x more profits for their company than I would (with some oversimplified back-of-the-napkin maths): https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings

[Dave3of5]

Do you feel better now ?

[sulam]

There are risks, yes, but fundamentally we are still an industry that has a lot of upside, vs many others. In a recession many businesses will contract, but it's a rare large tech company that will do more than pause some forms of spending. Even when you hear that hiring is paused at the big tech companies, they will usually still be backfilling departures, and they won't be doing significant layoffs. The exceptions are companies with large service-based businesses that may or not qualify as tech companies based on your definition.

[DeathArrow]

>The exceptions are companies with large service-based businesses that may or not qualify as tech companies based on your definition.

Like Amazon and Netflix? And if companies are spending less for online ads, that can hit Google and Facebook, too.

[sulam]

I work at one of those two ad-supported businesses, and would be very surprised if there are large scale layoffs.

And yes, as one of the responders noted, I meant the services companies. An IBM might do a large layoff, but I generally wouldn't put that in the same category as Amazon or Netflix. I've worked through three economic cycles now (at least I think we're seeing the end of the third) and while they haven't been great for everyone in the industry, we've been better off than most others. For instance, just to pick on one profession, I know way more lawyers who've become software engineers than vice versa.

[kgermino]

I think they were referring to companies like Accenture, IBM, or PwC. The "Professional Services" industry employs a ton of software developers and is fairly pro-cyclical.

[WisNorCan]

And all companies that focus on selling to other startups. Like Brex. They were the first to pop during the dot com bust.

[Abishek_Muthian]

>The demand for software engineers was driven partly by zombie app and saas companies all competing for "top talent", dependent entirely on free cash but without sustainable business models.

Now that the cash is drying up, Startups which didn't solve any real problem couldn't bruteforce their growth anymore. Perhaps this is good for the entire ecosystem.

[scollet]

There we go. This is the comment I was going to make, but you've done the idea justice.