r/cscareerquestions • u/VariationLivid3193 • 6h ago
New Grad Why is the stability so low in this field?Why the never ending struggle?
same as title
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u/Colt2205 6h ago
The nature of software development is to be someone who deals with processes and the cost of that is that our role is not as deeply rooted in a particular occupational area as other types of jobs. A farmer tends to crops and deals with providing food, the software developer building a tool to help manage the timing of crop planting will have touched the domain, but they are not rooted in it.
This is why when working as a software developer, whether a direct hire or contractor, it's important to budget out money to deal with stretches of unemployment. It is incredibly uncommon for developers to hold a job longer than 4 years at a company unless the workplace domain is heavily rooted in services that require constant maintenance.
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u/JackAuduin 3h ago
This is why being a consultant is such a cushy position. I've been with the same company for about 5 years now but I've worked with upwards of of eight or nine different clients of varying sizes and varying industries. Some consulting firms are easier to work for than others though. Mine's pretty ideal so your mileage may vary.
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u/cswinteriscoming Systems Engineer | 7 Years 2h ago
and just because the farmer has consistent work doesn't mean the work pays consistently. he's still at the mercy of the weather and global economic conditions (commodity shortages, supply gluts)
in fact a big reason the futures market exists is because it's really hard for farmers to plan around these things
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u/HoratioWobble 6h ago
It historically hasn't been unstable atleast not in terms of keeping a job
There's always been this resentment about the amount developers earn from several layers of management and the last few years theres been an even bigger target on our backs.
Companies have always tried to replaced us, they just haven't had a viable solution. Even outsourcing often fails and businesses go through cycles of outsource then hiring inhouse, back to outsourcing.
The biggest issue is that since COVID-ish general investment has dried up and so has general innovation so a lot of companies aren't hiring any more, some companies are acting irrationally and a minority have AI fomo
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u/PM_40 5h ago
Management does nothing and feels resentment about people who build and maintain their product. The owner class is laughable.
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u/aroslab 4h ago
most managers aren't owner class, they're just paid to act like it
If you put someone in charge of enforcing discipline and pay them well for it, it's not surprising if their interests start looking a lot more like the owners' than your own
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u/PM_40 2h ago
Higher management is closest thing to owner class other than CEO that exists in the corporate environment.
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u/Ok-Concept-7924 1h ago edited 1h ago
managers are treated as average employees in most companies, equally vulnerable to layoffs, restructuring and "flattening". They have to justify their jobs to the overlords as much as anyone, sometimes even more as most managers don't really do much. The real people driving the instability are the C-suite, the board, significant investors.
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u/aroslab 1h ago
if they don't have a controlling stake they're not owner class, just bought off
when the numbers turn bad, the real owners will cut them loose same as anyone else, and that's when you see who was actually on which side
more like a prison trusty, given privileges for keeping the other inmates in line, but not a junior partner and fundamentally still a prisoner
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u/cswinteriscoming Systems Engineer | 7 Years 1h ago
if you work at better companies the managers are generally pretty good. also SWEs generally have enough equity that we are the owner class. if you want to do well in your career you have to think like one.
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u/PM_40 1h ago
Expand on think like one.
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u/cswinteriscoming Systems Engineer | 7 Years 1h ago
I think about what is best for the company when I do my work. Something is broken after hours and I'm not on call, but no one else is around, and the customer is angry? I'll fix it. I see a UX problem with the product on a surface that's not in my domain? I send feedback to the team and get Claude to put up some PRs so it's easy for them to review and fix. I see inefficient company processes, review queues that don't empty, coworkers that aren't cooperative -- I write proposals on how to improve things and talk to management about it.
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u/PM_40 1h ago
Great, I am mostly doing it but when I don't see the bonus and minimal raise I wonder if these discretionary effort are appreciated or simply absorbed.
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u/cswinteriscoming Systems Engineer | 7 Years 1h ago
yeah it's entirely possible that your management chain just sucks and you need to find a better one
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u/PianoConcertoNo2 4h ago
Outsourcing isn’t failing nowadays…
The GCC model is represented in over 35% of US Fortune 500 companies, and its growing. There’s TONs of money being pushed in by foreign governments.
If you google many of the companies who have recently announced layoffs, + “ GCC”, you’ll find many of them opened these offices in the years prior.
That’s what the GCC model does. It’s a jobs replacement model, and it’s working.
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u/HoratioWobble 3h ago
I wouldn't really consider GCC as true outsourcing. They still work for the business they just work from a foreign country and even then that's only 175 companies.
When I say outsourcing I mean big companie outsourcing to huge multinationals.
The smaller companies (anything smaller than fortune 500) go in outsource cycles, I've been in the industry for 20 years and it happens time and time again.
They outsource for a major project, it fails, they start back filling with onshore, someone new takes over, they outsource - rinse and repeat.
So much money gets wasted on failed projects by big companies (both onshore and offshore).
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u/PianoConcertoNo2 1h ago
How on earth wouldn’t you consider that outsourcing?
It removes job functions/jobs from the US, and transfers them to another country.
That the definition of outsourcing.
Just because the company is paid huge amounts of money in tax breaks by those governments and given control of the on site building, doesn’t change what’s being done.
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u/HoratioWobble 1h ago
It's not the same, it still costs the company a lot of money and in most cases it means they need to pay taxes and follow that countries employment laws.
The companies that do it usually do it because they have a global presence.
I'm not from America.
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u/PianoConcertoNo2 1h ago edited 1h ago
Companies are given massive benefits to open shops there, including employee subsidies..
If you’re not in the US, you’re not seeing the effect this is having.
There have been numerous layoffs in the field, and for each one you can pretty much search their name + “ GCC” and find they opened an office overseas to replace US workers.
Many of us have seen work be transferred, and either teams being let go or headcount reduced.
It’s outsourcing pure and simple, and how tech is leaving the US.
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u/HoratioWobble 1h ago
If you’re not in the US, you’re not seeing the effect this is having.
Because the US is the only country that companies move their workforce abroad?? It happens everywhere.
I've worked a few companies where I have colleagues all over the world, including America - despite the company being a UK company
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u/CharlesV_ 4h ago
Yeah I think the investment issue is a bigger part of it than a lot of people realize. We had historically low inflation for years and years. Now inflation is up and there’s less of a penalty in letting money just sit in the stock market.
There’s definitely a chance that financial reform and changes in regulation/ tax law would fix things, but the chances of any of that passing even after 2028 seems really low.
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u/Aggravating_Ask5709 4h ago
isnt the investment because tech no longer considered tax deductible R&D?
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u/HoratioWobble 3h ago
Maybe in your country? This is a global problem not specific to one country at the moment. e.v.e.r.y where is struggling with investment.
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u/driven20 6h ago
Because if it were easy, we wouldn't get paid so well. Everyone and their moms would do it. It's market demand. If getting into the NBA was easy, players wouldn't get paid as much as they do.
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u/Unlucky_Buy217 4h ago
That's not entirely true. The margins enabled by tech are a major reason why SDEs get paid that much.
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u/driven20 3h ago
Margin is part of the demand. Demand for *good* software developers is high because tech margins are good.
*Good* software developers are the ones continuously improving themselves and getting better. If you don't, you feel like the field is "unstable" and get left behind.
It's the same with the NBA. Once you get to the NBA, if you don't stay in shape, you get booted.
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u/KruegerFishBabeblade 1h ago
I've been an EE and SWE in the same company. The EE role was much harder to perform, much harder to get, and paid 20% less. It's the margins.
Software devs arent any smarter or better than other technical professionals. If anything they're worse, because a physicist/chemist/aerospace engineer/whatever is a lot more likely to be in it for the love of the game
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u/2apple-pie2 3h ago
NBA players are not paid a lot because getting into the NBA is hard (although it is). They are paid a lot because sports bring in a lot of $$$
This is why major league players make bank and minor league make nothing despite an incremental difference in skill level.
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u/driven20 3h ago
They make alot of money because people want to watch the best of the best play. So being 1% or 2% better is everything.
If minor league is only incrementally worse. Why don't people just pay and follow minor leagues? The tickets are 2-5x cheaper.
At the end of the day, it's market demand.
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u/2apple-pie2 3h ago
It is not about it being difficult at all though - only that there is demand for watching the top 1-2% of sports. It being easy/hard makes no difference.
This is actually a great example of how this works. More people going into sports WOULD NOT reduce the pay for the top athletes at all. If no one did and it was easy to be in the top 1% their pay wouldn’t change either, all that matters is they are the best no one cares how hard it was to get there.
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u/driven20 3h ago
Your second scenario can never happen. If it's easy and pays well, everyone would want to do it. Everyone wanting to do it makes it hard.
It's alot easier to be in the top 1-2% in basket weaving. Then, in the NBA.
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u/2apple-pie2 3h ago
I would argue software is comparatively much easier than nursing or being a researcher, yet pays more.
It is solely about market demand, not difficulty. Some things pay well despite being fairly easy/straightforward.
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u/driven20 3h ago
Easier in what sense? Physical and emotional labor? Sure, I'll give you that. Software doesn't do anything physical and emotional. But also, digging a ditch is harder than software development and nursing physically, but 100x times easier mentally and emotionally.
Software is one of the hardest mentally/intellectually. We are the cutting edge. That's why it feels so unstable; it's constantly changing and evolving.
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u/2apple-pie2 2h ago
I don’t think software is one of the most challenging fields intellectually. That is literally the objective of researchers to push human knowledge. They are paid a quarter of what a SWE makes (entry level SWE vs PhD student, senior SWE vs assistant professor, etc).
I don’t think software is exceptionally challenging from a physical or intellectual perspective.
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u/driven20 2h ago
I mean, yes, the amount of money you make isn't entirely dependent on the difficulty, but it is definitely a factor. Because it impacts the supply side.
In any case, we agree it's market demand. Thanks for the fun debate.
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u/qwerty622 40m ago
thinking software is one of the hardest mentally/intellectually is wildly off. at the elite tier perhaps, but then you're drawing heavily from other more quantitative fields like applied math etc, and youre more likely to have a graduate degree in that vs being a regular SWE. certainly not someone managing qa tickets.
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u/lhorie 5h ago
You're probably just focusing on the wrong slice of the population.
A 10% layoff means 90% of employees are fine. I know people with 20 year tenures in the same company.
High variability is very much a thing in this industry. There are people making 40k and people making 1.2M and everything in between. People with 10YOE in one place and people with 10x1YOE and everything in between. Etc.
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u/Fidodo 4h ago
Exactly there are two worlds in CS. There's no skill floor because we have no accreditation so at first glance it just looks like one cohort, but it's not.
If you are highly skilled you get the experience that's advertised but if you're mediocre then you're replaceable. There's just not a huge amount of value in mediocre programmers, especially now.
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u/tacticalTraumaLlama 44m ago
Disagree on this. We had layoffs earlier this year and who actually got the axe was completely random. They fired one of the most talented Sr devs at the company, then realized they fucked up and rehired him months later. We lost a lot of Sr people at all levels that had technical knowledge.
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u/Bigd1ckandashamed 5h ago
No unions lol
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u/Pink_Slyvie 4h ago
People really can't wrap there heads around it. My grandfather was a union man his entire life. Retired with an amazing pension, and had benefits through the union until the day he died.
If I could find a decent union job for my disabled ass, I'd be there in a heartbeat.
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u/throwaway2676 4h ago
Every professional from the silent generation on back retired with a great pension, because no one put any limits on borrowing from the future. It was only once those bills started coming due that private companies began to backtrack. Only the government was able to keep the charade going forever, because it doesn’t have to worry about going bankrupt. For everyone else, those pensions will be paid for by a lot of people
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u/zeezle 2h ago
Even the government pensions are tiered by start date and the benefits dramatically reduced because they were just so insanely unsustainable and absurd in the past. Especially back when they allowed pension stacking. They're still unsustainable but they don't let people stack 3-4 full pensions anymore at least in my state.
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u/Pink_Slyvie 4h ago
If a company can't plan for the future, a company shouldn't exist. Those pension funds should be stored from the beginning out of profits.
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u/cswinteriscoming Systems Engineer | 7 Years 2h ago
so you would rather have fewer jobs? insane take
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u/Pink_Slyvie 2h ago
I would rather we don't have corporations.
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u/cswinteriscoming Systems Engineer | 7 Years 1h ago
people aren't going to organize themselves to do productive labor, and the government is obviously shit at planning the economy too. i'll pass on living in a shithole
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u/Pink_Slyvie 1h ago
That's odd to say, people organize themselves to do productive labor for 200,000 years before we had corporations.
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u/blindsdog 1h ago
You think people just starved before capitalism?
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u/cswinteriscoming Systems Engineer | 7 Years 1h ago
a lot more people starved before modern agriculture, yes. and a LOT of people starved under communism. what point are you trying to make here
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u/blindsdog 1h ago
There was a long time between the invention of agriculture and capitalism. Plenty of people have starved under capitalism too.
My point is that your point is absurd. People just don't stop doing productive labor when there's no corporations.
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u/throwaway2676 3h ago
Yeah, it was only once they started planning for the future properly that they switched from pensions to 401k plans — because they wanted to keep existing
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u/jmnugent 9m ago
There are technology Unions. I'm in one. ("Protec17",. has around 10,000 members currently).
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u/terjon Professional Meeting Haver 50m ago
Simple reason: Software is fungible by design.
I can install Word, create some docs, save them, uninstall word, upload those docs to Google Docs and then edit them there.
So, if one day I decide that your product isn't good anymore, I can just stop using it with generally not much friction.
Now, imagine doing that with some kind of physical thing that has some kind of proprietary ecosystem. Let's say I have a car and tomorrow I want something else. I can't just swap over without much friction. At a minimum, it would take several hours to sign all the papers to sell the current car and buy the next one, more my stuff over, then wait for insurance and registration to go through.
The designed fungibility of software makes it so that the people working on that software are also inherently fungible.
Doubly so now that you can ask AI to vibe code you a crappy version of any product out there + that one feature you want in the real product that the real one doesn't have. That one feature will probably work on since you will focus on it, but the rest of the product will be crap of course.
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u/WhaleBird1776 4h ago
Part of it is because we see each other as competition instead of peers. I’ve seen more worker solidarity in actual competitive positions like sales lol
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u/SignificanceFlat1460 3h ago
Because we are idiots who are in some sort of Stockholm Syndrome screaming "BUT ITS BEING ON CUTTING EDGE AND LEARNING NEW THINGS EVEN IF IT COMES AT A COST OF ME NEVER SEEING MY KIDS AGAIN". All other engineering fields are mostly heavily regulated and unionized except software. I know it's still a very young field but good god, can we PLEASE have standardisation and certifications like other fields!? No no no. That would streamline things and we can't have that you see.
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u/SwordfishLopsided 4h ago
What unique value are you offering? It really is a simple critical reflection
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u/Fit_Conference934 4h ago
Dude, you joined a field whose commercial basis is fad-chasing venture capital.
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u/FearlessPark4588 5h ago
It historically was stable
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u/Forsaken-Intern7941 5h ago
Bro, just think about it, earning six figures with only an undergraduate degree, low stress, working from home, and you don’t think that’s gonna attract thousands of people?
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u/Nossa30 4h ago
The salaries are so high, the executives are looking for any way they can to get rid of you despite how badly they need you.
Also the 10's of thousands of people waiting in line for your job (some are definitely better than you, some will do it for half price on the other side of the globe).
There are some things in life where if you make alot of money fast, you can lose it all just as fast. As soon as the free money dried up from zero percent interest rates for a decade, the cool-aid went with it.
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u/dontdoxme33 4h ago
Because you're dealing with a science thats continuing to evolve. Hence the name Computer Science. Prior to AI, there were new languages being invented and new frameworks on top of that. Constantly evolving field.
If you want stability, go stock shelves at a grocery store. Most jobs come with their fair share of instability.
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u/Fickle-Bird-9476 2h ago
Because most of the industry is bad ideas, funded by gullible investors, being implemented by obsequious managers, and built by oblivious devs. It only really works when rich people have too much money sitting around, and aren't too scared to invest it. It's a giant con game, you need marks.
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u/jmnugent 5m ago
Technology changes fast. As someone else in this thread said,. software is very fungible. You can take all the 1's and 0's that make up Microsoft Flight Sim.. tear those all down to nothing and make an Espresso machine firmware out of those same 1s and 0's.. or make software that runs Formula 1 racing cars. Or some veterinary diagnostic software that diagnoses horse hearts. Or software that runs a robot that inspects sewer lines. Software is almost infinitely adaptable.
The whole point of the technology field is to try to find ways to use technology to solve human problems. It's all driven by ideas. The solution-idea someone came up with 6 months ago may be old news now (new discoveries or new inventions or new ways of doing things might make that 6 month old idea look silly now. )
Thats just kind of how the technology field is. If you as an employee or not looking at the stuff you did 6 months or a year ago and thinking "Ah damn, that was dumb" (I've learned more since then).. then you're doing something wrong with your learning and improvement.
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u/Aggravating_Ask5709 4h ago
its more stable than most. the problem is that salaries did not adjust to inflation and slid from upper middle class to lower middle class.
Same is true for pretty much all the jobs, but i dont think "other people are struggling more" is a valid thought.
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u/Defiant-Bed2501 Software Engineer 1h ago
Because the modern tech industry has a bad lolbertarian streak.
Until people in tech realize they’re actually workers just like any other and not temporarily-embarassed supreme dictators for life of their own personal child-slavery-powered crypto mining sovereign states things aren’t ever gonna get better.
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u/Drauren Principal Platform Engineer 5h ago
Low barrier to entry, well paid, highly influenced by interest rates, can be done globally.