this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
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lmao i just started my software engineering degree last week
Welp
Fuck.
Do networking or something that will get you at least fucking with physical equipment.
I think a lot of what we're seeing is a combination of things coming together at once.
Firstly tech way overhired during covid. Between the money printer giving free cash to the banks, people staying home with little else to do but sit on the internet all day, and nil interest rates CEOs felt like fuckin' geniuses with a capital J. Now people have largely gone back to their old habits and are spending less time and money on internet things.
Secondly interest rates have gone up. Tech tends to rely on losing money for a long time and using equity and debt to keep the company alive until they can go from red to black (if they can). That money becoming more expensive makes it harder for them to be unprofitable. Staffing is expensive, probably 50% or more of their overall costs. It's the most obvious place to cut back.
Finally AI. I am not convinced it is LLMs that are replacing jobs. I believe it is the LLM hype and subsequent reallocation of resources that is costing jobs. If I have a team of people working on some thing that makes a little bit of money but it's nothing to write home about and that team costs me $10 million a year but what omagad i need AI now or we're going out of business! i might reallocate that $10 million by firing that team and hiring some expert I found on LinkedIn who worked for a cyrpto company 6 months ago.
All those things taken together I'm actually not that doomer about the situation. Yes the tech industry sucks right now but it's not going to stay like this forever. What will really kill us all is climate change and AI is certainly not helping with that.
It's fine if you're okay with working anywhere in the world (i.e. outsourced + growing countries like India, Brasil, etc.) Most pure coding jobs being replaced are largely financial reasons not actually because of ML/AI automation (for now)
Get into IT tech support as a backup. On top of your academic work in software engineering, begin studying for CompTIA certs like A+ and messing with computers in your spare time in order to build up technical knowledge and skill. To get spare computer parts, you can ask around for people to donate their e-waste to you or just buy old computer parts online. You don't necessarily have to build a functional PC, but you need experience in troubleshooting and if your Frankenstein PC doesn't successfully boot up, you should be able to say, "it doesn't boot up because of A, B, and C." If anything, having old faulty parts that you're MacGyvering together is better for practicing troubleshooting skills.