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are a lot of you unemployed against your will nowadays? I was lucky enough to find a good, stable job, but being out of the open market now I'm curious about conditions. how's availability? are companies actually hiring for positions they're posting?
what are salaries like? what would be salaries for, say, Java developers, at 2, 5, 10 years of experience? or developers in general, of any language?
what are salaries like? what would be salaries for, say, Java developers, at 2, 5, 10 years of experience? or developers in general, of any language?
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SF Bay Area
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Re: job market conditions
Sun, November 9, 2003 - 2:15 PM
Conditions are absolutely brutal these days. It's the worst I've ever seen. -
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Re: job market conditions
Sun, November 9, 2003 - 9:44 PMwhere are you? things in Northern California seem to be better at least than 2001 when I was laid off, and Bush was warning about a recession even though there wasn't one yet, so companies had open reqs but were holding off on filling them. Now there are fewer positions but at least companies will actually hire people sometimes. -
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Re: job market conditions
Sun, November 9, 2003 - 11:08 PMIt's all relative - in general things are not anywhere where they were - even in the early nineties. -
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Re: job market conditions
Thu, December 4, 2003 - 2:12 PMI'm wondering if people are still thinking conditions as bad as they were.
I am working at a place that was recently hiring, and it seems like there was a sharp change in the market recently (since mid november). People that would have been available for 6 weeks if you talked to them in january are now getting 3 offers in a couple of weeks. It probably had something to do with that 18% jump in tech spending or something from Q3, but then again this could just be a large series of coincidences that I'm seeing.
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Re: job market conditions
Sun, December 7, 2003 - 10:59 PMHas Java been around 10 years? Good grief. Time flies!
What I'm seeing is that there are many jobs, but they don't pay as well as in the good old days. And yet .. the cost of living does not seem to have come down much since the crash. Hmm. Something's gotta give, it seems to me!
I keep hearing about new jobs that sound pretty interesting and fun. None none of them pays as well as equivalent jobs during the boom, of course. But I think that if you are the kind of person that wants interesting, fun work that means something, then it is just as easy to find a worthwhile job now as it was during the boom period.
That said, if you have any desire whatsoever to get a degree - Ph.D., masters, a second BA, whatever - now is the time!
Hmm. You asked about salaries. I'm guessing: 40K would be about right for an entry-level person, just out of school. A more experienced person could make maybe 50-60K. I'd be interested to hear what other folks think of these estimates. -
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Re: job market conditions
Mon, December 29, 2003 - 1:08 PMThe salary estimates seem pretty darn low for the bay area. I'm seeing more like 75-80k for relatively inexperienced developers, up to well past the 100k mark. This is mostly taken from requirements I had from new hires in the last few months. -
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Re: job market conditions
Tue, December 30, 2003 - 6:17 PMholy shit. define "inexperienced", and where the hell are these jobs?
people aren't actually getting hired at those rates, are they? 75k for "relatively inexperienced" is 1997-98 level. are these embedded engineers? chip designers?
clearly I'm in the wrong field. -
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Re: job market conditions
Wed, December 31, 2003 - 10:11 PMI've recently (within the last 3 months) seen W2 hourly senior developers hired @ $75/hr (annualizes to ~ $150/k) here in the Bay area.
Along the dimensions of geography, skill set, and company type (software vendor vs. 'internal IT shop') the opportunities & wages seem very heterogeneous.
From what I can tell, if you are an internal IT staffer for a Fortune 2000 company, you won't be for long unless you're willing to move to India, China, etc. & work for 1/10 the salary. A notable exception appears to be companies like financial services, where custom software supports mission critical business processes.
The software vendor companies look like they're carefully defining 'core product development' & keeping it insourced.
Anyway, my bank account isn't enjoying this recession either!!! -
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Re: job market conditions
Sat, January 3, 2004 - 11:46 AMI'm 100% in agreement.. the fortune 2000 jobs are not long for this country unless we get some legislation to fix this outsourcing idiocy. As for the $75/hour, that seems completely right to me, I know people that make in that range both in SF and NYC.
As for the industry I'm working in: server side java engineers are the figures I'm quoting. "Relatively inexperienced" = 4 year degree and perhaps 2 years in the real world. "Senior" = 4 year or postgrad degree and 5-7 years as a pro. It varies wildely by your technology though; I know that visual basic people were making something like $35k/year a bit ago, if you could find work at all. -
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Re: job market conditions
Wed, January 7, 2004 - 1:20 PMshit. I'm in server-side Java development.
maybe I need to shower more often. or dress nicer.
jesus. -
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Re: job market conditions
Fri, January 9, 2004 - 9:00 AMI dunno. You don't look like a turbo-slob to me.
In my experience, there seems to be 2 ways to get to a bigger bag of money. (1) do contracting vice FTE or (2) expect/ask for more in the interview(s). -
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Re: job market conditions
Mon, January 19, 2004 - 8:26 PMdo more contracting instead of full time employment? not sure what "vice" means. -
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
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Re: job market conditions
Tue, January 20, 2004 - 3:50 PMA direct consequence of making $75/hour, I might add. -
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Re: job market conditions
Wed, January 21, 2004 - 12:59 PM...one would certainly hope so !!!
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Re: job market conditions
Thu, March 4, 2004 - 5:55 PMHi all...
$75/hr? good grief. I just got back into the area (after
spending a year in Vancouver going to film school) and trying to
get interviews from up there just wasn't working.... Anyways,
I spoke to a recruiter (hmmm...) yesterday who basically said
my 10 years of experience were worth shite as I'd been
"unemployed" for the past year and a half. So to possibly
compete, $35/hr was more like what I should be asking in general
- $40 to $50 only were for just fired people.
Ok, recruiter... but still. I've sent out a lot of resumes
and hardly any nibbles. I keep thinking mine is too wordy or
doesn't match requirements so exactly, so HR people trash it.
I guess I've sensed an uptick in the general job market, more
optimism / attitude based, but things are still annoying. But
I'm no good at the job search thing - only 4 in the past 12 years...
and I still have so much to do on my scripts... :) But all
it takes is one sale!
doug -
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Re: job market conditions
Thu, March 4, 2004 - 9:26 PMI don't know about anybody else, but I have had nothing but grief from recruiters. The only good thing I could say is that they have been consistent, consistently clueless.
Use Craigslist, and most of all personal contacts.
steve -
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Re: job market conditions
Mon, March 8, 2004 - 9:51 AMAgreed; Recruiters blow. I think the only way you're going to get the kindof salaries we were discussing earlier is via personal contacts. It sucks that you have to know people, but as someone who has been a hiring manager during the downturn, just trying to get your resume noticed in a flood of 300+ submissions is a very big problem.
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Re: job market conditions
Thu, February 26, 2004 - 1:49 PMI'd be interested to know what areas are more employable.
A lot of my friends who do Java are having a hard time finding positions.
On the other hand systems developers and device driver people
seem to be fairing a lot better. -
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Unsu...
Re: job market conditions
Thu, February 26, 2004 - 3:41 PMIf you have experience working with customers, you have a leg up on other developers. LIke in consulting roles or professional services. Java is definitely levelling the playing field for straight-out programming jobs.
Other niches that seem active: .NET, wireless devices, DBAs (job security in this one!), games developers.
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Re: job market conditions
Mon, March 1, 2004 - 11:13 AMFor the most part, I'd characterize the tech employment situation in the SF Bay Area and NYC (where I have visibility) as having bottomed out with some minor signs of life.
More specifically:
- Consulting market is still very tight; Permanent employment is definitely easier to come by but still tough and at lower pay than the boom
- Skills in a programming language (e.g. Java, C++) don't stand by themselves; If you're looking for a perm job, you need some industry-specific capability (games, web, finance, security, etc.)
- I agree that the big companies seem to be offshoring "rote" software development jobs that require little if any domain expertise or customer interaction. In fact, the guys I know running offshore development (even little companies in India) are staying busy.
One of my "indicators" of tech industry employment in the SF Bay Area are the listings on Craigslist (www.craigslist.org). You may want to check it out for fun and information. -
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Unsu...
Re: job market conditions
Mon, March 1, 2004 - 1:45 PMJon, that's a great point about Craigslist. Reading want ads is a great way to gauge what job skills are relevant or not. Also its a good way to see what directions companies are moving in, particularly smaller ones.
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