It’s no secret that the tech job market really sucks. Even for me who still has a job, I’m not exactly keen on my department, I have many reservations about my product, I wanted to move on.
But even when I tried applying for jobs, why should they hire me instead of someone who’s so desperate they’ll work for less? This just happened to me last week.
This made me realize, tech is a cyclical industry. There is a new technology which kicks off a boom. Our last boom was built on mobile. The one before that, web.
CS grads who were expecting to work on a legacy C++ app instead got better jobs in SF and NYC at cutting-edge tech companies, which lured more people into tech. CS grads were paid so much for just four years of education and intenships. CS grows. Then comes a bubble when tech is at an all-time high. Then it bursts and there is so many layoffs. People who couldn’t make it in tech are forced to leave and go to non-tech jobs.
These days, if you want to make a lot of money, you become a doctor. Or maybe an investment banker. You only go into tech if you truly love tech that you’ll work on an unsexy ASP.NET app for your local hospital. You’ll use a crappy HP ProBook without admin rights instead of a shiny new M3 Max MacBook Pro. You’ll be able to make it in Cincinatti or Houston, not SF or NYC. You’ll work in a legacy codebase nobody wants to touch with a terrible UX.
10 years ago, if you wanted to be rich, you became a coder. You only go into medicine if you truly loved medicine that you’ll spend more years in school for a more physically demanding job. A job with a terrible work-life balance. A job where you’re often on-call. A job where actual lives are on the line, and the liabilities are huge if you mess up. And you’ll be dealing with legacy healthcare systems instead of a nice UX from cutting-edge tech companies.
Heck, the reason why I became a software engineer instead of working in networking was because I was lured by these cool tech companies, which I came to regret even if I would’ve made less in traditional IT.
Even for me, I’m considering turning my eBay side business into a second stream of revenue (as opposed to selling my used homelab gear) to make me not dependent on a product I hate, or be in the Big Data Surveillance Capitalism industry that I want regulated out of existence.
Sure, I might not need more money but I need financial independence from a sub-industry I don’t want to be in. And yes, e-commerce is hard too but trying to get another job is even harder, otherwise I would’ve left by now.