Banks use the money to fund questionable (and sometimes ridiculous) tech start-ups
Demand for tech “engineers” skyrockets and with it, so do tech salaries.
When Powell turns off the faucet, the money dries up.
It might be the end of a very lucrative era in tech. Mass layoffs appear to have spooked many tech workers into being willing to accept lower salaries, according to a new study. . . .
Another Meta worker said that companies that offer high pay “are in layoff mode, and their culture is a dumpster fire.” For example, Meta and Google, which are known for offering high compensation packages, have each laid off thousands of workers over the past few months. . . .
Blind’s 2023 Engineering Salary Expectations Trends Report is the result of an April survey of over 7,300 US tech workers, as well as data the platform pulled from over 50,000 workers that used the company’s talent marketplace, Talent by Blind. . . .
Mid-level engineers in the tech hubs have experienced a year-over-year salary drop of about 13%, Blind found.
I am reminded of the couple, engineers from the Bay Area, with years of professional experience writing phone apps and programming code for robots.
They had zero experience actually buying and installing robots and making robots.
They had zero experience managing employees, buying trucks, maintaining trucks, negotiating office rent etc.
They had zero experience in anything food related.
They got $445 million is venture funding from a bank and started a mobile pizza company involving robots making pizza in a moving truck.
“Hey it is tech-related so . . . throw money at it.”
It folded in 2023 (5 years later.)
Point being, for a while (and perhaps still now) an era of free money meant anything tech-related had little trouble getting tons of start-up money, and with that many many engineers were hired. Now that free market interest rates are beginning to return, sanity is returning and with it tech salaries are dropping.
run a lemonade stand that paid employees $15/hour and still made a profit, it would have been an improvement
successfully replaced at least one employee anywhere with a robot, it would have been an improvement
etc.
Their only credential is that if someone else were replacing live employees with robots they could write the code for the robot.
But, in an era of free money that terribly-deficient resume was translated as “You guys are tech-related and you want to do something tech-related. Great! Here is $445 million.”
