Brian Austin

December 8, 2022

Job Market for Engineers

via (The Scoop: The 2022 Hiring Market, as seen by Tech Recruiters)

A couple of key points from Gergely Orosz's article..

The market has slowed down from the frenzy of 2021-Q1 2022

Can confirm in the smaller company world. In fact he states that "expect most former FAANG engineers to not join smaller companies", which is 100% spot on. The compensation rate alone makes it nearly impossible unless the engineer is taking a pay cut.

Engineering managers are in-demand, but the profile seems to be changing

Blame Elon if you want but this trend was already underway. Again at smaller companies you need more doers and fewer pure managers. I find myself in this hybrid roll, managing both projects and writing code.

Senior software engineers keep being in-demand and hard to hire.

Caveat by saying competent seniors who can either manage projects & people or are really good at product and architecture.

Remote work could be a double-edged sword when slashing budgets.

It's a labor cost equation for smaller firms, and likely contributes to the demand for senior engineers. Less experienced US developers can be augmented by more skilled, less expensive off-shore resources.

The trick for less experienced developers will be to break into software engineering and build the experience to become valuable to a company. Don't expect the company to train you, it's low ROI and many times the engineering leaves for a higher salary at another company. You need to come in the door either knowning how to do the job, or knowing how to teach yourself.

About Brian Austin

| AI Dev Tool Research | Engineering Leadership | Tech Lead Manager | Software Architect |

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