<story><title>Is the Job Market Dying?</title><url>https://rachdele.substack.com/p/is-the-job-market-dying</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zer00eyz</author><text>No, it is not.&lt;p&gt;For those of you who are new here (aka didn&amp;#x27;t live through the 2000 bubble) welcome to a shitty job market.&lt;p&gt;1. Your best bet to get a job is your network. If you were a clock puncher, if you didn&amp;#x27;t go above and beyond, if you aren&amp;#x27;t the person who is gonna make the co-worker who vouches for you look good... you are not gonna get much help in your network.&lt;p&gt;2. The next best bet is to either a) start your own company or b) find someone who wants to start their own company. You know what got us out of the 2000 crash? Web 2.0 was the sexy name but it was ad tech that put money in the bank. Pop unders for Netflix, free iPods, and mortage sign ups... all sorts of nonsense... Today it&amp;#x27;s much easier to get something small going that pays the bills nothing is stopping you other than you.&lt;p&gt;3. If neither of these things are for you, and you want to be in tech then you might have to suffer. Job at the liquor store checking out drunks while you do whatever crappy contract work you can find on your laptop to keep yourself in the game.&lt;p&gt;Every one I know who survived not having a job when the 2000 bubble burst fit in one of these buckets. The rest left tech for good.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>PheonixPharts</author><text>&amp;gt; The rest left tech for good.&lt;p&gt;This is an important reality check for many people.&lt;p&gt;I entered tech in 2004, during the immediate aftermath of the dotcom crash. At that time software engineers got paid well, but not insane. Additionally, every software engineer I met was passionate about writing code.&lt;p&gt;Honestly, around 2019 I was really missing those days. The field has become flooded with people looking for a high paying job with essentially no interest in software or computer science beyond the paycheck it provides. I don&amp;#x27;t blame people for wanting to make money, but I do miss virtually everyone in the industry being genuinely fascinated with software and programming.&lt;p&gt;The good news is, if you&amp;#x27;re the kind of person who would write code even if it paid minimum wage, you&amp;#x27;ll survive this. People whose book shelves are filled with CS books, who find themselves working on coding problems at night because it&amp;#x27;s fun, who can&amp;#x27;t help hacking around with new ideas on the weeked, will very likely continue to work in software. You&amp;#x27;ll likely make less money, but you&amp;#x27;ll also have more fun.&lt;p&gt;Unsurprisingly, in this current market I&amp;#x27;m getting paid less but having more fun at work than I&amp;#x27;ve had in nearly a decade.</text></comment>
<story><title>Is the Job Market Dying?</title><url>https://rachdele.substack.com/p/is-the-job-market-dying</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zer00eyz</author><text>No, it is not.&lt;p&gt;For those of you who are new here (aka didn&amp;#x27;t live through the 2000 bubble) welcome to a shitty job market.&lt;p&gt;1. Your best bet to get a job is your network. If you were a clock puncher, if you didn&amp;#x27;t go above and beyond, if you aren&amp;#x27;t the person who is gonna make the co-worker who vouches for you look good... you are not gonna get much help in your network.&lt;p&gt;2. The next best bet is to either a) start your own company or b) find someone who wants to start their own company. You know what got us out of the 2000 crash? Web 2.0 was the sexy name but it was ad tech that put money in the bank. Pop unders for Netflix, free iPods, and mortage sign ups... all sorts of nonsense... Today it&amp;#x27;s much easier to get something small going that pays the bills nothing is stopping you other than you.&lt;p&gt;3. If neither of these things are for you, and you want to be in tech then you might have to suffer. Job at the liquor store checking out drunks while you do whatever crappy contract work you can find on your laptop to keep yourself in the game.&lt;p&gt;Every one I know who survived not having a job when the 2000 bubble burst fit in one of these buckets. The rest left tech for good.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lifeisstillgood</author><text>I was box number three - tried to be box number two and went bankrupt, and took a job at PCWorld (UK version of BestBuy?) doing repairs.  Couple of months in I had coded up a sort of automated PC fix program - turned 2 hours into 5 minutes.  There is always a way to find an entrepreneurial gap - even if I never quite exploit it to my own financial benefit&lt;p&gt;Worst day in that job when I was trying to crawl out of bankruptcy was meeting a few of my ex-colleagues while wearing the crappy purple uniform.  I was putting food on the table and they looked like I was a joke.&lt;p&gt;I still put food on the table, the job market always wants people who can just code.  Networking is hard and requires longitudinal effort. But the jackpot remains elusive.&lt;p&gt;Keep trying</text></comment>