I hear this a lot of times recently — what I'm interested by now is where the new equilibrium will be going forward.
So far us software engineers have often seen jobs as replaceable and we know we'll have another one at the snip of a finger should we quit.
But with enough people actually quitting, how many remote or soon-remote companies will there be to scoop up the supply until quitting an office job cold could be a bad decision?
Genuinely curious here: Any of those quitting for the same reason recently, how hard was it to land an equally well paid remote job?
> how many remote or soon-remote companies will there be to scoop up the supply until quitting an office job cold could be a bad decision?
We'd have to take into consideration how the demand will change at the companies who are refusing remote work right now. I'd expect that it wouldn't diminish: they will still have business goals that will require developers to fulfill. They won't suddenly say "No software people want to work for us? Eh, we don't need them anyways. Let's build toasters instead".
I changed jobs recently, though not because the old one was going to make me come back to the office. I've never seen such a frothy job market, I had multiple offers for fully remote roles with a 20%+ raise.
I'm a data engineer in the Midwest with just under a decade of experience. All these companies seem to be hiring plenty of other roles and levels of seniority as well.
You motivated me enough to finally update my Linked-In and mark it open for work. I'm also in the Midwest (near Chicago).
If you don't mind me asking, to what extent did you put yourself out there? For the longest time I just pursue whatever recruiters reach out to me, but I think I should probably do more active searching this time around.
For anyone curious, since I turned that on 7 hours ago I've gotten 7 recruiters that have messaged me, and most look like pretty decent fits for my experience, better than the random messages I usually get (and I usually only get a few that reach out each month). Guess I should have done this sooner.
That's great! I sent a few cold applications through workatastartup.com, but I mostly just updated my profile there and on LinkedIn, and flipped the switch to "tell recruiters I'm open" on the latter.
I had a similar experience to you on LI. I wasn't particular desperate for a new gig, so I aimed high on salary range. At first I was told I was too expensive, but a couple weeks in I had plenty of options at or above my range, so shoot for the moon!
I'm trying to shoot for the moon, but yeah, so far I keep getting told it's too expensive. Sounds like this 'labor shortage' is definitely just companies don't want to pay, or haven't gotten the memo yet.
I'm still getting told ranges I expected to see two years ago for senior engineers (like pre-pandemic, where Chicago's market just kinda sucks compared to elsewhere and if you're here there's almost no remote jobs elsewhere to get higher compensation, but now there is), not even for principal engineers, which some of these roles are for.
And yet I've had about 25 recruiters reach out to me in the past few days. So there's got to be a lot of demand out there.
> So far us software engineers have often seen jobs as replaceable and we know we'll have another one at the snip of a finger should we quit.
I think this is going to be the thing that cracks.
If everybody is WFH, I probably don't need YOU specifically. Programmers are about to get a big wake up call as to what their value actually is in the global market--and it's a lot less than they think.
If I were a particularly nasty manager, I would be pushing WFH like crazy and looking at laying off both my most expensive and most vocal WFH people in 18 months.
The most senior folk pulling the strings will survive. The rank and file will get decimated.
So far us software engineers have often seen jobs as replaceable and we know we'll have another one at the snip of a finger should we quit.
But with enough people actually quitting, how many remote or soon-remote companies will there be to scoop up the supply until quitting an office job cold could be a bad decision?
Genuinely curious here: Any of those quitting for the same reason recently, how hard was it to land an equally well paid remote job?